


i'm still (i'm here)

by pieii



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Found Family, Guns, Han Jisung | Han is Whipped, Han Jisung | Han is a Sweetheart, Lee Minho | Lee Know is Whipped, Lee Minho | Lee Know is a Sweetheart, M/M, Non-Idol AU, North Korea, Slow Burn, Tenderness, and a mood, buckle up folks cause this is gonna b TENDER, but i take some creative liberties because i want to, crash landing on you au baby !!, he just tries to hide it cause hes a Serious Soldier, idol lino, idol seungmin and hyunjin too !!, ill update tags as i go !!!, lino is an icon, minbin bickering, minho being a carat, minsung disaster gays confirmed, north korean soldier jisung, not a meet-cute .. more of a meet-disaster, theyre in a group together, this is very similar to the plot of the show
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pieii/pseuds/pieii
Summary: When JYP suggests M3S does something "productive" on their break, it could have been many different things, all of them better than Seungmin's suggestion of them doing something to "face their fears." And yet, Minho finds himself in a paragliding suit, regretting every decision he made that led him off the nice, solid ground of Seoul.He regrets even more when he's caught in a tornado, and more still when he ends up crash landing in North Korea.Some break this is.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 58
Kudos: 66





	1. crash landing on you

**Author's Note:**

> hello my loves ! happy pride pt. 2 mwah !
> 
> im back .. not even a week after bringing u acab minsung .. to bring u .. crash landing on you minsung
> 
> (im planning to post something once a week for pride month because feeding the gays is what i do .. we will see how well that works out)
> 
> like i said in the tags this'll follow the plot of the show v closely at some points !! i steal some of the fitting lines too <3 and though i highly recommend u watch it (it's on netflix) , it's not necessary to follow along !!
> 
> this is dedicated to one person and one person only .. ri jeong hyeok .. <3
> 
> title from here i am again by baek yerin aka THE crash landing on you song

Going paragliding is a risky sort of fun.

There’s always something that could go wrong. You could go too high and not be able to breathe correctly. You could go too low and yeet yourself directly into a skyscraper. You could pull it wrong and land in a totally different area—that seemed to have happened to Hyunjin in a past life, given the fear in his eyes as he explains in detail how the people living there would undoubtedly capture you and sell your body in parts on the black market, not leaving even a single bit to send back to your bandmates so they could lament your loss to more than just your spirit.

“Chuck my espresso machine in my coffin instead,” Minho says, shrugging on his suit. “And by the way: who even says ‘yeet’ anymore? Vine is dead.”

“Hey! Vine lives forever in our hearts, bastard-hyung,” Hyunjin says, eyes wide, incredulous and offended at the same time. At least he’s distracted, now. “And if you die, there’s no way I’m burying that espresso machine.” He crosses his arms over his chest. If there was a wall nearby, undoubtedly he’d be leaning against it. “I don’t have the drive to save up money for eleven months.”

“Alright. Just for that, there’s no way I’m not coming back. You clearly don’t recognize that my death would bring us enough publicity to fund a hundred thousand espresso machines. Someone so financially unobservant could never be responsible enough to take care of my baby.”

Hyunjin rolls his eyes. “Your death would bring us enough publicity to buy one bubble tea to share at Angel’s, hyung. You’d sympathy trend on Twitter for a couple hours at most.”

“As long as it’s got fifty percent sweetness and tapioca pearls, I’m satisfied.” And with that, Minho clicks the safety clasp into place. “Have fun at my funeral, Jinnie. Make sure that fake ass bitch Kim Seungmin isn’t on the guest list.”

“Oh, how I will miss your loving soul, Lee Minho,” Seungmin drawls. “How will our next comeback ever win without those hip thrusts?”

“That’s my point. Without my hip thrusts our career will crash land in the dumpster. Pray for my safety.”

“I’ll pray we make do without you.”

Minho snorts. “I love you guys.” And he means it. Call him dramatic, but if these are his last words to his best friends, he’d be okay with that.

“Famous last words,” Hyunjin sings, and wow. Their fans are right. M3S really does share a single brain cell.

“Those wouldn’t be famous,” Seungmin argues. “They’re lame as fuck. Say something with style next time you’re about to die.”

Minho shoots each of them a hand heart.

Seungmin pretends to chew it up and spit it out, and Hyunjin misses it, having already turned his gaze back to the, admittedly, stunning view off the mountain. Minho takes a deep breath, steps up onto the platform, and goes on his way.

Going paragliding is a risky sort of fun, especially when you’re afraid of heights. But JYP insisted they do something fun over their break to show the fans a—how did he put it? A “different side to themselves.”

And then Seungmin had to make it all about facing their fears and shit. And now Minho is here. Paragliding. In the sky. Very high up.

It is pretty. He can admit that much. With the wind sweeping across his face and the birds’ song echoing faintly around him, it’s better than a plane. Infinitely better. He should tell JYP to have them paraglide for their next tour.

What a headline that would make.

He’s busy contemplating the logistics of bringing peanut packs on a paragliding journey when a particularly strong gust of wind blows him aside.

Instantly he becomes more alert.  _ Danger, danger, danger, _ his body screams. His legs dangle and sway like he’s a little kid on a swing set, too short for his feet to touch the ground.

_ Don’t look down!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! _ his mind screams; exclamation points at all, because this is a rather important thought.

He looks down.

Which was, all in all, a bad decision. Maybe Minho should start listening to his thoughts. Because now there is no pretty view. There is no birdsong. The only thing he can see is all the ways Hyunjin said he could die.

The wind has picked up now, has picked way up, and it’s a far cry from the gentle, sunny sky he flew into. It’s gray, and swirling, and when Hyunjin triple checked the forecast this morning he reported a forty percent chance of rain by five P.M. and not a goddamn tornado.

A tornado.

There’s always something that could go wrong. There’s always something that  _ will _ go wrong, apparently.

There’s some law about that isn’t there? Morphine’s law. Morpheus’s law?

Maybe they should call it Minho’s law.

Well, he thinks. At least his last words were good. Maybe not famous-good. But good nonetheless.

The first thing he notices, when he comes to, is that the afterlife has a hell of a lot less pollution than Seoul.

This must be heaven. There’s no way any part of those grimy, greedy corporations responsible for the pollution could belong anywhere other than hell.

Minho opens his eyes. It’s a slow process—it’s bright up here, and his eyelids are heavy. Presumably from the ordeal of dying.

He lifts his head up when he’s got the energy for it and winces instantly. Never mind, he thinks, rubbing his sore neck. This is hell.

But the air smells so sweet. A bird flies past his vision, wings scarlet and white and graceful. It makes a little  _ tweep-tweep _ sound at him. He feels like a Disney princess. Birds don’t sing happily in hell.

Heaven it is.

He follows the sight of the bird, through leaves and hanging branches, until he can’t quite make it out against the reddish bark of a neighboring tree.

Wait.

Neighboring tree. Minho whips around, ignoring the audible protest from his sore body, and … well. There it is. More leaves. More hanging branches. He’s hanging in a tree.

He’s still wearing his suit, and his paragliding gear. That kinda checks out. Wearing the clothes you died in, until you go through Heaven Orientation or whatever they do and they give you cool, flowy white robes and special conditioner that makes your hair move even when there’s no wind the way it does in Pantene commercials.

And then he looks down, and  _ oh God he is definitely in hell. _

He can’t help the shout that escapes his mouth at the sight of the thirty-something feet between him and the cold, hard ground.

_ Fourteen is fatal, _ his mind whispers on instinct.

_ I’m already dead, though, _ he whispers back.

If only that were enough to keep him from being scared. Maybe his personal damnation is to sit here in his paragliding suit thirty-something feet off the ground for the rest of time.

Minho sighs.

He died before adopting any cats. There are no animal shelters in hell because the people who run them are angels already. They probably don’t even go to regular heaven; there’s probably a special ultra-heaven just for people who run animal shelters and Carrie Fisher.

Lying back in his parachute pack, he looks up at the light streaming through the rustling leaves and imagines there’s a cat laying on his chest, right where the sun’s falling. The cat would purr, and swat at his hand when he tried to pet it, and then go back to purring.

Maybe this can be his coping mechanism against what seems to be an oncoming eternal existence in the situation he fears most.

It’s a while before he hears any sound other than the birds whistling to each other. In this time, he has decided what his Emotional Support Cat looks like (orange, with big green eyes), is named (Soonie), and likes (being pet on her forehead, and under her chin on a good day).

It’s been such a while, in fact, that it takes him a moment to even register the sound, and even longer to identify what it is.

Footsteps. Crunching against the ground. A twig snapping.

Minho shoots up into an upright position. He imagines his Emotional Support Cat hissing, and sends a mental apology to her.

When his eyes finally catch the source of the noise, he can’t quite believe it.

“God?” he calls, waving his arms. “God?”

It’s God! It must be! Coming to get him out of this fucking tree, thank  _ God _ . Maybe this  _ is _ heaven.

And then he hears a sound that never fails to set his nerves alight. However faint, it’s clearly and unmistakably the sound of a gun. Being cocked. And probably raised.

Raised at him.

_ Well. Guess this is hell. _

Minho chances a look down, ignoring the rush of anxiety that comes just from seeing the ground again. There’s a person there—a soldier, if the way they’re dressed is anything to go by. Are there really soldiers in hell? Or does God just like to wear full-body camo?

“Hey!” he yells. “Hey, hey, I’m just stuck in this tree, nothing to see here! Nothing to shoot here!”

He’s been told multiple times that some unbelievable shit comes out of his mouth when he’s under pressure.

The soldier doesn’t shoot, though. This is a win. Minho is  _ great _ under pressure, thank you very much.

“Get down.” The soldier’s voice is low. Commanding.

“I’m trying!” Minho shrieks. “It’s just really,  _ really _ , high up here, and I’m scared of heights and I’m not exactly interested in dying a second time—I don’t even know if that’s possible but with my luck I’m sure it is. You ever heard of Morpheus’s law? Yeah, I—”

“Get down.”

Minho sees them adjust their gun, and. Yeah. He’s not interested in finding out how gunshot wounds feel when you’re in hell. Probably not wonderful.

So he unclasps the safety clip and launches himself out of the tree.

There are a number of things that can happen when you launch yourself out of a tree. First and foremost, you could die, and while that’s not likely, this  _ is  _ a thirty-something foot drop. And this  _ is _ hell. So it’s kind of realistic to expect the worst.

You could break an ankle. Or a leg. Or any bones in your body, really. Or all the bones in your body.

The one option he didn’t really consider was landing directly in the arms of a soldier.

And yet, that’s exactly what happens.

The soldier lets out a tiny ‘oof’ at the impact. But they don’t shoot Minho, and they don’t drop him. They barely even stumble.

A success!

Minho draws his head back, just a tiny bit. He locks eyes with the soldier.

Who has a round sort of face. Cheeks that haven’t lost their chubbiness. Big, dark eyes. Lips pursed in a way that looks almost like … a pout.

Hmm.

Maybe this is heaven after all.

Minho slides out of their arms, with all the grace of someone who recently died and jumped out of a thirty-something foot tree after being held at gunpoint.

“Hey, um. So. Where am I?” asks Minho, ever the conversationalist.

The soldier doesn’t answer. Maybe they are not a conversationalist.

“Like … I’m not really sure what to do, here?” Minho flashes a smile. “I’ve never died before. Surprise surprise.” He lifts his hands up in a sad attempt at jazz hands.

The soldier’s eyes follow the movement of his hands.

“Oh, fuck. This is the afterlife, maybe not everyone speaks Korean.  _ I do not know where to go. _ ” This is the first time Minho has ever been grateful JYP makes them take English lessons.

Minho starts when the soldier’s voice cuts through the silence.

“I speak Korean.” Their voice is sharp. And … strange. There’s a certain lilt to their words Minho’s never heard before.

“Great!” Minho smiles again. Hopefully this time it looks a little less like a grimace. “Um, so. Like. Where am I?”

The soldier blinks.

“Like … I dunno if I’m supposed to just outright say it.”

Is saying ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ taboo when you’re actually in heaven? Minho’s never been in a position to find out before.

The soldier blinks again.

God. Minho has to do all the work here, doesn’t he.

“Is this heaven or hell?” he blurts out, and the soldier doesn’t flinch at Minho’s sudden increase in volume.

“Neither,” they reply calmly.

_ A-plus for helpfulness. Really. Thank you, kind soldier. _

“What is that supposed to mean? Is this, like, Purgatory? Or, wait, what’s it called? The place between them? Lino? Lingo?”

“I guess you could say it’s a sort of in-between area.” The soldier’s face remains stoic, but there’s a sparkle in their eyes now.

“Is this where I wait? Y’know, to be judged?” When the soldier doesn’t answer, Minho keeps going. “You’re dead, too, right? Have you been here long? Or did you die at the same time I did? Are we waiting together to get judged? D’you think—”

“I’m not dead.”

And, well. “What?” When Minho turns back to look at the soldier, their gazes meet.

“I’m not dead. And you’re not dead, either.”

Considering Minho was paragliding in a tornado, this seems unlikely.

Minho snorts. “Yeah, yeah, okay, sure. I didn’t die in a paragliding accident, and you didn’t die in some soldier-y conflict with whoever is fighting these days.” Minho takes his first good look at what the soldier’s wearing. “Who  _ is _ fighting these days, anyway?” he mumbles, eyes tracing the badge on their chest and the flag on their collarbone and the lovely slope of their neck—no, Minho. Focus.

He reaches up to gesture at the star on the soldier’s helmet. “Well,  _ this _ kinda looks like the North Korean star, but that’s impossible.” He laughs for good measure. It lasts a second too little.

The soldier raises an eyebrow. “Impossible?”

“Yeah,” Minho giggles, “I mean …”

He trails off when he registers what’s happening. He’s in what looks like a big clearing. Lots of trees. Clear sky. No pollution. The sun’s a bit farther down into the sky, now, and it’s about in the position it’d be back home. He’s in the same time zone.

And the only person for what may very well be miles is wearing soldier’s clothes with the North Korean star on their helmet.

Minho has made his final decision.

He may not be dead, but this is hell.

Minho clears his throat. “North Korea, huh? Well. That’s cool. I’ve always wanted to come perform here.”

The soldier does nothing, but Minho is all too aware of the gun at their side. The gun that was pointed at him  _ minutes _ ago. The gun that could have killed him. A North Korean gun. Oh God.

Of all the places to crash land.

“So!” Minho starts back up. He plasters on his million-dollar smile. “I seem to have gotten lost on my way! How silly of me. I will just … be on my way, now.” He starts backing away from the soldier. They have a gun, but if Minho runs through the trees … “Goodbye!” he calls, because he may have paraglided through a tornado and gotten a gun pointed at him and jumped off a thirty-something foot tree but Lee Minho is nothing if not a professional. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”

The soldier lifts up their gun-holding arm, and Minho backs up faster.

“Which way is the South, exactly? My internal compass is a little,” he makes a twirling motion around his temple, “wonky, y’know?”

“You need to come with me,” the soldier says, matching Minho’s pace as they move forward.

“Hm … I actually disagree, you see. I’m very fast, you know! I can really just zip right on out of here, and you can get back to your soldiering and I can get back to my life!” Minho stumbles, but doesn’t fall, when his ankle hits a particularly big rock. Dancer’s instinct. “It’s just such a  _ hassle _ , to take me all the way in, and then take me all the way back home, and I could really just cut out all that hassle and go home now!” He smiles brightly at the soldier, who pauses for a moment.

That moment is all the opportunity Minho needs.

He turns on his heel and books it, right into the forest.

He can hear the soldier chasing after him, and resists the urge to look back and see how much of a lead he’s got.

It might be for fear that it’s too small. It might be because he’s the kind of guy who never looks back. Or because he doesn’t want to run face first into a tree.

That’ll remain a mystery.

So Minho keeps his eyes forward and weaves through the trees, trying not to run in a straight line for too long just in case the soldier tries to shoot him. Which would, to be honest, suck.

He runs, and he runs, and the thrumming of his pulse in his ears coupled with the steady sound of the soldier behind him would not be his ideal background music of choice for a workout, but he’ll take what he can get.

He runs and he runs and the soldier keeps following, and he has half a mind to give up. This is the sort of hopeless thing that looms over you like a forest full of towering trees that all look the same.

And then Minho remembers he’s in North Korea, and nothing is the same. If he lets this soldier catch him, there really will be nothing left of him to send back to his bandmates.

So he runs.

Anyway. He didn’t come first in the hundred-meter sprints at ISAC to be outrun by a stupid North Korean soldier.

He hears the sound of water, and in the next second a “Stop!”

It’s a creek, barely ten feet across, and Minho runs right through it. He doesn’t have time for doubt.

“Stop!” the soldier cries again. “That’s a minefield!”

Okay. Maybe he does have time for doubt.

In the same moment he makes his decision he freezes, and turns around. Slowly.

He knows this is probably a ploy. He knows this soldier’s only goal is to get Minho in jail. Or … held by the government. Or dead. Minho’s not really sure what the North Korean dealing-with-South-Korean-idols-who-got-swept-into-the-country-by-a-tornado protocol is. And he’s not keen on finding out.

But Minho watches as the soldier skids to a stop, chest heaving. He meets the soldier’s eyes.

And there they are.

Standing on opposite edges of a creek. Looking at each other. An idol and a soldier.

In North fucking Korea. Of course. Some break this is.

“What?” Minho asks, and yes, he knows exactly what the soldier said but this can’t be how it ends.

“There are mines,” the soldier huffs out. “Everywhere in this area. You need to be careful.”

Minho couldn’t for the life of him tell you why this soldier, who’s had a gun pointed at his back for the past hour, is telling him to be careful. But he says nothing further, just watches as the soldier steps closer to the creek.

“Every step you take is a dangerous one. Only seasoned experts can—”

There’s a click.

And then silence.

The soldier looks down at their feet, and Minho follows their gaze. To the mine under their foot.

Oh.

Well. This is a surprise that’s … not unwelcome.

“Only seasoned experts can what?” Minho asks. He’s got the innocent look down: wide eyes, raised eyebrows, tiny smile.

The soldier clears their throat. “Only … seasoned experts. Can successfully navigate the area.”

“I see!” Minho grins. “I’ll have to be very careful, then. Is this why you’re stepping so deliberately?”

“Yes.”

Minho takes a test step backwards. And another.

There’s no point in trying to hide the wicked grin overtaking his face.

The soldier takes out their walkie-talkie. Fuck. Minho didn’t think about that.

He watches as the soldier says “Squirrel to Fox. Come in. I have an intruder in the DMZ minefield, riverside. Male, five-seven—”

“Five-eight,” Minho snaps. He’s … particular about his height.

The soldier, probably not expecting Minho to interrupt, jumps a little at the sound of his voice. And loses their balance.

The fear that sparks in Minho is involuntary, and inexplicable. Maybe he shouldn’t care if this soldier dies—after all, they did hold him at gunpoint, and they chased after him for miles, and right now they’re the only thing keeping Minho from going back home. But Minho couldn’t bear to see anyone, no matter what they’ve done, die in such a horrible way.

Maybe that’s why the soldier warned him of the minefield.

It seems to be in slow motion, the way the soldier leans forward, too far forward, and windmills their arms to get back to a rocky upright. The walkie-talkie flies out of their hand and splashes in the clear, shallow water of the creek, too far away for them to reach from where they’re pinned in place by the mine.

Minho lets out a breath and he watches as the soldier does the same, their chest deflating with relief before they look up and see Minho, still watching them, and tense back up.

Maybe it’s that split second of vulnerability he saw, or maybe it’s the lingering image of sparkling eyes, or maybe it’s just the kindness overflowing from Minho’s heart of gold. But they’re way out from where the soldier’s original post must’ve been, and it’d take ages for anyone else to find the soldier and deactivate the mine, or kill it, or turn it off, or whatever the hell you do with mines.

Minho starts toward the soldier, who immediately brings their gun back out.

“Relax,” Minho breathes, hands up, “I’m just—here, hold on.” He steps across rocks like a path toward the soldier and scoops up the walkie-talkie.

Where to put it, where to put it … aha! He moves upstream and positions the walkie-talkie in the water, a couple feet away from a rock close enough for the soldier to reach.

He looks at the soldier. Who is already looking at him.

“It’ll float down to you with the current,” Minho says, feeling compelled to explain as he makes his way back to the other side of the creek. “I just needed a little time. For my escape, y’know?”

The soldier just … looks. Minho’s getting used to it at this point.

“Oh, right!” Minho claps his hands together. “Which way is the South, again?”

“Keep on this path,” the soldier sighs, resigned. “Through the field. Through the trees again. Left at the fork.”

“You’re the best,” Minho sings, winking across the creek. Last impressions matter just as much as first impressions, after all. “Come find me after reunification. You’re totally my type.”

He starts off again. And barely makes it three steps before—

“Watch out!” the soldier cries, and Minho glances down at where his foot was about to go.

Right. He’s in a minefield. Maybe minding his step would be wise.

“By the way!” he raises his voice, but doesn’t turn around. He knows the soldier is listening. “Don’t try and shoot me in the back. That’s just rude.”

And then he’s off.

In the distance between the creek and the fork in the road, Minho has time to think. Reflect a little.

Normally his morning jogs let him clear his mind. This is just another morning jog! Another normal morning jog! It just happens to be in the evening. And in a paragliding suit. And through a minefield in North Korea!

Minho feels like that meme. Everything is fine.

But now is not the time to contemplate the gravity of his situation.

Should he trust the soldier?

On the one hand, the soldier seems like an honest person. They caught Minho when he jumped out of the tree. They saved him in the minefield—twice, at that. They have cute chubby cheeks. They technically never shot at him. Their instructions thus far have not gotten Minho killed yet.

On the other hand, Minho really shouldn’t be trusting anyone. Not here. Maybe the soldier didn’t want to see him get blown up by a mine, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t turn Minho in. And this … this is North Korea.

Minho is so completely clueless. So utterly out of his depth. But any path that could lead him into the hands of the North Korean government is an automatic no.

So when he reaches the fork, he doesn’t hesitate in turning right.

_ At least now I’m on the  _ right _ path. _

Minho continues on the right path, on and on and on until his ankles are aching and his thighs are too and his knee is throbbing from where he tripped and fell on a rock.

So much for those dancer’s instincts.

But he pushes through it—it’s kind of life or death here. Kind of a big deal.

And he wonders if the soldier’s gotten help from someone.

Maybe they’re still standing there, stuck on the bed of the creek, keeping their foot planted on that mine. Maybe their leg hurts like Minho’s does. It has been a couple hours—the sun’s long gone by this point, swallowed by the trees lining the horizon.

Maybe the soldier is dreaming about the day North and South Korea finally reunify, so they can find Minho again.

Yeah. That’s definitely it.

_ Me too, kind soldier. Me too. _

Minho takes the last step over a hill and looks down. His body flushes with relief at the sight of a village.

Home sweet home. Thank fucking God.

His knees almost crumple beneath him as he starts down the hill, all the adrenaline leaving his system at the thought of a safe place.

He’ll find somewhere to stay for the night, and in the morning he can call a taxi to the nearest airport. And then he can go back to Seoul, write a song about a soldier with pretty eyes that gets fourteen music show wins and never think about North Korea again.

He’ll adopt a cat immediately, of course. An orange cat with big green eyes. Named Soonie. Fuck the dorm rules. He almost died.

He can make Soonie her own little stocking for Christmas. He’ll move Hyunjin’s off the mantelpiece to make room.

Minho passes under the entrance archway debating what color glitter glue he should use to write her name.

He’s thinking a nice dark green. It’ll bring out her eyes. Plus, it’s a holiday color.

His feet are dragging in the dirt, lost in thought, and he moves aside instinctively when he hears the telltale clop-clopping of horse hooves behind him.

It’s not until the horse passes, dragging a small wagon behind it, that Minho actually registers what just happened.

He stops in his tracks. A horse-drawn carriage?

Minho looks on, watching as the person driving the cart rings a little bell on its side.

There are no streetlights; just lanterns hanging high from wooden posts. It’s still disorientingly dark out. There’s something … not right.

At the sound of the bell, it seems, some dark figures emerge from the neat, boxy houses and the uniform gates.

Minho can hear murmuring, and he can see them handing things to one another. Maybe it’s a salesman? Or a paperman?

Whoever it is, he decides, starting towards the cart, they might be able to help him get home.

But as he approaches the cart, the not-rightness of everything around him becomes more and more prominent. Something’s unsettled deep in his stomach, and hearing the ladies crowd around, buying tofu from this horse-drawn carriage, voices carrying the same foreign lilt as the soldier from earlier had …

Minho glances back up at the entrance archway. It’s lighter out than it was before—his eyes have adjusted enough to let him read the banner hanging from it.

_ Self-sufficiency! Prosperity! Let’s work together towards our future! _

A horn blows, somewhere, and Minho nearly jumps out of his skin. Damn. This is worse than the fireworks at M-net.

He steps into the shadows as more figures spill out onto the road. There’s a dull chatter among them as they all walk in unison down to what looks like some sort of … plaza? Village square? Ominously and ambiguously open space?

“Good morning!” comes a voice from … somewhere. An intercom, maybe. A broadcast.

And then Minho stops thinking about where the voice is coming from and realizes what he just heard.

Good morning.

He hadn’t noticed the darkness in the sky fading away, but sure enough: the darkness in the sky is fading away, little by little.

Reality hits Minho, then. It’s the next day. Soon, it’ll have been twenty-four hours since he last had his feet down on South Korean ground.

Because he knows it now, knows that this is not South Korea. This is not home. The carriage, the banner, the strangely synchronized way the villagers assemble and move together in a government-issued morning exercise routine.

He never left.

He should have gone left.

And he’s standing there, staring at the villagers and their poses, wishing he were watching Seventeen at MAMA instead.

Minho hears the crunch of tires before he sees the car above it.

It’s driving under the entrance archway, under the  _ Self-sufficiency!  _ banner, and it’s going fast. Or maybe that’s just the way they drive up here. Minho wouldn’t be surprised.

It skids to a stop, with a screech that bores deep into Minho’s ears.

Minho watches someone step out, and there’s a feeling that comes with it. Like there should be boss music playing in the background.

He watches their steps fall on the dirt and imagines the Imperial March.  _ Dun dun dun dun dunun dun dunun. _

They’ve got a flashlight. And they seem to be looking for something.

Or … Minho’s breath catches in his chest. Or someone.

Before Minho can address the fact that being a South Korean idol lost, injured, and all in all not having a good time in the middle of his country’s greatest enemy is, decidedly, not a good position to be in, someone’s pushing him backwards.

His first thought is  _ Oh, so  _ this _ is how I die. _

Of course it’s not a paragliding accident that took him out. That would be too easy. No, Lee Minho is going to die from dehydration after being tortured for four days straight and given no food or water in the slimy, dusty dungeons of North Korea.

Damnit. He doesn’t even have the consolation of it being a good story to tell. Because no one will know.

_ I really don’t have a lot going for me at the moment, do I. _

But his self-pitying train of thought stumbles, then stops, then falls off the tracks as he raises his eyes to who pushed him.

Hair framed in the morning light and eyes dark with confusion, holding Minho against one of the village's uniform gates is the soldier who found him.

Of fucking course.


	2. i'm half-doomed and you're semi-sweet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey babes :] im back !
> 
> thank u for all ur support on the first chapter ;-; yall r the best
> 
> and im glad we are all in agreement !! jisung god .
> 
> [baby playlist](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2EJG-r4L00LmjNZgwdrPf8Rpun5ezUQO) in the end notes <3
> 
> chapter title from disloyal order of water buffaloes aka the only song ever

Minho’s first thought is  _ I wouldn’t mind if he pushed me up against the wall more often. _

Which, while being true, is maybe not the most appropriate thought to be having in this situation. Minho watches as the soldier glances over his shoulder, moving his body to completely shield Minho from view.

The flashlight person walks towards them, and when Minho’s breath hitches he can hear the soldier’s doing the same.

And then the flashlight person walks by them.

Minho exhales, feeling himself deflate. Safe.

The soldier seems to relax a bit, too, before he whips his head around to stare at Minho.

Well … safe from the flashlights, at least.

“What,” the soldier hisses, through gritted teeth, “are you doing here?”

From the way the soldier didn’t immediately throw him to whoever that flashlight person was—hid him, even, from the flashlight person, Minho can guess there’s some reason the soldier doesn’t want Minho in the hands of the authorities.

What the reason is … he’ll have to figure that out when his brain isn’t in survival mode.

“I—I don’t know!” Minho whispers, trying his best to look panicked. Seeing as the overwhelming emotion of this entire ordeal has been panic, it’s not particularly difficult. “I tried to go the way you said, but I fell and hurt my leg and all the trees look the  _ same _ and I saw the lights over here and thought I made it home but I  _ haven’t _ and—” he cuts himself off. Breathes. Then chances a glance up at the soldier to gauge the reaction.

The soldier seems deep in thought. But not quite sympathetic.

Damn. Is Minho gonna have to break out the tears? If he doesn’t get this soldier to help him, then he’ll be completely on his own. And as far as Minho’s concerned, being on your own in North Korea is pretty much code for ‘slow and painful death,’ which he would rather avoid, if he’s being honest.

“I’m—” he takes a second to breathe. Looks down at his feet. “I’m really glad you’re here, if I’m being honest.” He smiles, as bashfully as he can, and raises a hand to tuck a piece of hair behind his ear.

_ Please find it in your heart, kind soldier, to not sentence a sexy and well-meaning idol such as myself to uncertain death. _

He looks up again, at the soldier, and smiles again, too—this time, it’s his ‘ending fairy’ smile: lips closed, eyes crinkled, eyelashes fluttering.

Who in their right mind could send someone  _ this _ sexy to the North Korean authorities?

And, sure enough, the soldier is avoiding Minho’s eyes now.

It’s not like this is the first time Minho’s ever sent someone into a gay panic. But seeing as this time he’s in North Korea and his life depends on it … well. There’s something nice about being in control, even if it’s just for a second.

The soldier adjusts his grip on the fence behind Minho, and—wait. How did he know Minho was here? Did he follow Minho? No, that can’t be it. Minho knows he was alone after they met at the river.

Did he guess Minho was going to show up here? No … he told Minho to go left. And he was shocked to even see Minho here.

Was he planning to come here anyway? Was this just a coincidence? Is this …

“By the way,” Minho whispers, shifting a little to look at the fence behind him. “Is this your house?”

The soldier doesn’t answer. Minho can’t say he’s surprised.

“I’m sorry to intrude like this, but do you have any food?”

Who could deny someone  _ this _ sexy of a safe place to rest his feet?

Minho makes a beeline for the mirror once the soldier’s pointed him to the bathroom. And God … he looks like he’s been through hell and back.

Well. That’s not too far from the truth.

But still.

Force of habit guides Minho’s index finger to the surface of the mirror. There’s a small space between his finger and the mirror, which means it’s not a two-way mirror. That’s relieving, even though Minho’s not quite sure what he’d do about it otherwise.

He allows himself to lean closer, then, examining the toll the day has taken on him.

_ My stylists are gonna beat me into the next life. _

His skin is so textured, from all the stress. And blotchy, from all the running. And just plain dirty. From all the dirt.

_ I’m surprised he even let me in his house. If a filthy goblin like this showed up at the dorms, I’d call JYP himself. _

But Minho is, at heart, a problem solver, so he tries to find something to push his hair back with, fails, and washes his face anyway. There are no face-washing headbands in North Korea, apparently.

“It’s okay,” Minho says to his reflection, sweeping his now-damp hair back off his forehead and surveying his new look. “Fans love it when your hair’s wet. Remember that fansite? Two hundred thousand followers for a fansite dedicated to you with sweaty hair. This is okay.”

Just another bathroom pep talk. It just happens to be in the bathroom of the house of a North Korean soldier, rather than the bathroom of M3S’s dressing room.

Maybe  _ Stranded _ can be the concept for their next comeback. Minho’s doing some very in-depth research for it.

When Minho makes peace with his unbrushed eyebrows and chapped lips and gathers the courage to go back out into the hallway, he is met with his favorite smell in the world.

Food.

There’s a steaming bowl of something both delicious-looking and delicious-smelling at the table, and a cushion on the floor, and the now-familiar outline of the soldier’s back, adjacent to the cushion Minho supposes is his seat.

The soldier looks up when Minho sits down. He’s taken off his jacket, and the sleeves of his dark green long-sleeve are pushed up to his elbows. He is, unfortunately, still handsome.

And … there is no bowl in front of him.

Minho was proclaimed Most Likely To Die By Getting Lost In A Forest by his loving members when they went on Buzzfeed, and is constantly awarded with the title Dumbest Person To Ever Live to Twenty-Seven, Hyung, Really, How Are You Still Here? by Seungmin.

But even Lee Minho—no-thoughts-head-empty extraordinaire, as he is affectionately dubbed by his fans—could not consider the chance that these noodles are poisoned.

This soldier wants Minho out of North Korea. This soldier’s got Minho at his mercy.

Minho trapped this soldier on top of a mine. Even if it wasn’t technically Minho’s fault, it’s not in his favor either.

And, most obviously, the soldier’s not eating! Isn’t that, like, a universal sign in dramas that the food is poisoned?

Minho sighs, picking up the wooden spoon and dipping it into the bowl. He watches the broth slowly fill the spoon.

Is he seriously considering eating these noodles, poison be damned?

… yes.

There’s a rush of frustration through Minho’s body. Poison should be administered in a mysterious and sexy way, like in the flower Wonwoo ate during Minho’s favorite live stage of  _ Fear _ .

Poison should  _ not  _ be administered in a bowl of yummy noodles! In what world is that mysterious and sexy? It’s just cruel!

“Why aren’t you eating?” the soldier asks. “Are you allergic to water chestnuts? Sorry, I didn’t check—”

“No,” Minho muses. “I  _ am _ allergic to poison, though.”

The soldier blinks. “Is this … your way of finding out if I’ve poisoned your food?”

Minho smiles sweetly. “What else would it be?”

“You telling me about your allergies. Does poison count as an allergy? It’s purposely harmful to everyone who ingests it.”

“You’d know more about poison than I would,” Minho points out. “You’re a North Korean soldier.”

“You’d know more about poison than me!” the soldier protests. “You’re a South Korean spy!”

“I’m—” Minho cuts off his retort when he registers what the soldier said. “I’m a what?”

“A … spy?”

“You say that like it’s obvious.”

“It  _ is  _ obvious.”

“Oh, yeah?” Minho crosses his arms. “Do tell.” There’s no way this guy can  _ actually _ think Minho’s a spy.

The soldier sits up a little and starts counting on his fingers. “You flew an unpowered aircraft across the DMZ on the day our power was out and our electric fences were down; you took a route where all those on duty were unavailable; you came to this military village instead of going home; and you came to my house, of all houses.” He looks up at Minho, eyebrow quirked. “Do you need more?”

Well. This guy actually thinks Minho’s a spy.

“Excuse me?” Minho manages to find his tongue. “There was a tornado! I was paragliding! And I told you—I lost my way! It’s all just a coincidence.”

“A coincidence,” the soldier repeats.

“Yes! I’m famous down there! What kind of idiot country sends a famous person to act as a spy?”

“Considering no one here knows you,” the soldier says, crossing his arms. “I’d say it’s a perfectly reasonable option.”

That hurts, but Minho’s not gonna lose now. He scoffs.

“Everyone with internet and good taste knows me. My group topped the global charts for a  _ week _ after our latest comeback.”

“No one here has internet.”

_ Or good taste, either, _ is what Minho is planning to say. But he stops when he registers what the soldier just said, and  _ what— _

“You … don’t have internet?”

No one should look this smug while confirming they don’t have  _ internet _ of all things, but the soldier nods as if it's something to boast about.

“But,” Minho starts, tone dropping, “how will people know I’m here?”

It's been, what, a full day? A day and a half? He can't help but worry about Seungmin and Hyunjin. He hopes they won’t get in trouble because of this.

"They … they won't," the soldier replies, and his tone drops, too, marching Minho's. "You won't be able to contact anyone.”

“What?” Minho breathes. “No contact? None?”

The soldier snorts. “You really should’ve done some research before agreeing to be a spy. What did you think it was like here?”

“I’m not a spy! I’m an idol! I came here by accident and I want nothing more than to go home!”

The soldier clicks his tongue and rests his forearms on the table, leaning forward.

Minho leans forward with him, imploring. Eyes wide. “Will you help me go home?”

“No.”

“Wh—” Minho bites his lip. Takes a pause. “Why?”

“Procedure dictates you need to be taken to the State Security Department.”

“So why am I not there?” Minho snaps. And immediately regrets it. His entire goal here is to not end up in the hands of the North Korean authorities. He really isn’t doing himself any favors here.

But the soldier huffs, and twists his fingers. “You’re not there … um. Because … because—”

There’s a loud banging sound from outside, and if the soldier made an attempt to hide the way his shoulders sink in relief he didn’t do a very good job.

He stands up from his cushion and takes the bowl of noodles from where it is: untouched in front of Minho, with the noodles still tempting even in all their potentially-poisoned glory.

Minho watches him walk through the doorways to what Minho guesses is the kitchen, then out to wherever the noise is coming from.

So there’s a reason Minho hasn’t been taken to the authorities. One that the soldier doesn’t want him to know.

Interesting.

“—do you mean he’s not gone? That South Korean?” comes a voice from outside. A new voice.

Minho stands up and tiptoes the way the soldier went. There’s a big archway in the—what should he call it? the living room?—that opens up to the courtyard in the back.

“We really need him gone, though,” comes the same voice, and this time Minho can see it’s attached to a body, currently sitting on the steps of the soldier’s house. His back is to Minho, but his broad shoulders are clothed in the same fabric as the soldier’s wearing. They must work together. “God, if he goes to the State Security Department—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know—” the soldier starts, but the newcomer keeps going.

“—they’ll know Yongbok was watching TWICE videos instead of keeping an eye on the cameras and Jeongin was—”

“C’mon, really, d’you need to—” The soldier’s eyes are flickering between the newcomer and Minho.

“—reading a letter from his mom instead of patrolling and that  _ you _ failed to catch—”

“Why don’t you stop talking now—” the soldier says shortly, but he’s bulldozed again.

“—that man who was right in front of you!” The newcomer stands up from where he was untying his shoelaces and turns around. “All I did was stop to take a rest after chasing him for a while, but  _ man _ are you screwed if they find that guy—”

The newcomer cuts off when he catches sight of Minho.

The soldier looks  _ so _ frustrated. Minho would pity him (having dumb friends can be exhausting; he knows) if the newcomer hadn’t just saved his life.

“If they find that guy?” Minho asks innocently. “Which guy?”

“That … _that_ _guy_ …” the newcomer gasps. Minho can see him connect the dots as his sentence trails away.

“The guy who totally outran all of you and looked outrageously handsome doing so?” Minho clasps his hands together and cups his face, framing his smile like a particularly victorious flower.

The newcomer raises an eyebrow. “‘Outrageously handsome’?” He turns to the soldier. “Oh, Captain, were there two guys we were chasing?”

Minho scoffs. This guy’s lucky he’s so used to similar disrespect, courtesy of none other than his lovely dongsaengs Kim Seungmin and Hwang Hyunjin. He steps forward, towards the newcomer. “Here. Come stand next to me if you’re confused. It’ll make my handsomeness more obvious.”

The captain snorts, and smiles in the split second before he realizes Minho’s looking at him and steels his expression back into a neutral one. Minho mourns the loss, but one look at the blustering newcomer has him triumphant again.

“Hey, Captain, you still have that shovel?” the newcomer asks again, glaring daggers at Minho’s beaming face.

Minho just runs a hand through his hair, leaning against the wall. “Do you normally resort to such barbaric methods this quickly, or am I special?” He even throws in a wink, for good measure.

"I'll—" the newcomer's retort is cut off by more banging on the gate.

The captain trudges over to open it, and three more people pile in.

"Hey, so about yesterday," one of them begins, looking hopeful. "Is everything all cleared up?"

The captain shakes his head. "The man's still here. He's—"

"Right here," Minho finishes graciously, smiling his best Idol Smile when all the eyes turn to him. "This is your squad, right, Captain?"

The captain in question lets out a long-suffering sigh. "Yes."

Minho looks at the three men who just arrived, and they look back at him, nervous. "Hmm … you're all so cute." He watches as their faces adopt varying degrees of shock and flusteredness. He pouts, then gives a long-suffering sigh of his own, shaking his head for effect. "I'd hate to imagine what would happen to you if I  _ somehow _ ended up at the State Security Department."

"Hey," the captain barks, voice a lot closer than Minho remembers it being. He grips Minho's wrist. "Don't talk about such things so loudly." He starts pulling Minho back towards the house.

"Here, come on in!" Minho calls to the captain's men, gesturing for them to follow. As if unsure whether to listen to Minho or not, they slowly make their way inside the house.

Now they're all seated around the captain's table.

Well. Except the captain. And Minho, who has opted to sit on the stairs. It places him a little higher up than the others, makes him feel more powerful. Which is good for making demands.

Unfortunately for Minho and his demands, the captain is standing.

Minho would stand up with him—he's not one to be bested when it comes to power moves—but if he's on his feet for much longer he'll probably pass out, which is decidedly bad for making demands. And just bad in general.

But breaking this tense, uncertain silence is a power move too, and Minho beats the captain to it.

"So!” He claps his hands together. “What’s the plan?”

“The … plan?” one of the captain’s men repeats. He’s got curly hair and big, confused eyes.

“Yes! The plan! For getting me back home.”

“Does it have to be in one piece?” asks the newcomer.

Minho narrows his eyes. “Unless you want JYP, the National Intelligence Service, and the United Nations all knocking on your door, I’d suggest it be in one piece.”

The newcomer rolls his eyes, but one of the captain’s other men perks up.

“Did you say ‘JYP’?”

This must be—who did the newcomer say was watching TWICE videos?

“Ah, Yongbok,” Minho hums. “Who’s your bias in TWICE?”

Yongbok ducks his head, blushing as the entire squad turns to look at him. “Momo.”

“She’s good, right?” Minho grins. “She helps me with my choreography work sometimes.”

“You work with her?” Yongbok looks starstruck.

“Yeah! I—”

“Is that what’s important right now?” asks one of the captain’s men. The one from before, the one with the curly hair. He looks like a curly fry.

“Yes,” Minho answers promptly, because TWICE is always important.

“No,” the captain sighs. “No, that’s not important right now. What’s important is what we’re going to do next. Anyone have any ideas?”

The newcomer raises his hand. “We could bury him in the mountains.”

“Let me rephrase. Anyone have any  _ good _ ideas?”

Minho, in his characteristically mature fashion, sticks his tongue out at the newcomer. Who sticks his tongue out right back.

Minho swears he sees a smile on the captain’s face at the exchange, but when he faces the captain to check, it’s gone.

“Maybe …” Curly Fry muses. “My uncle works as a boat-to-boat man …?”

“Oh, that’s smart!” the captain says. “How often does he leave?”

Curly Fry thinks for a second, drumming his fingers on the table. “Every … every fifteen days, I think. That would make the next one … in—let’s see … two days?”

Hold up. Is Minho supposed to know what a boaty-boat man is?

“Am I supposed to know what a boaty-boat man is?”

“Boat-to-boat,” Curly Fry says, slowly, enunciating clearly.

“Am I supposed to know what a boat-to-boat man is?”

The last of the captain’s men raises his hand. He looks … younger than the rest of them. His voice is high when Minho gestures at him to speak.“It’s when you take a small boat from the shore far out and then secretly meet up with a bigger boat that can take you to another country!”

“Oh, that’s smart!” Minho says, and he’s met with a blindingly dimpled smile from … who is this? He looks young, and earnest. Like the type to write home. Like the type to read a letter from his mom instead of patrolling. So this must be … “Thank you, Jeongin.”

“Captain,” the newcomer whispers, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “How does he know all our names? He must be a spy.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the captain says, deceptively sweet. “It couldn’t be that someone talked loudly about such things in front of him.”

Minho snorts, and the captain’s gaze is drawn to him. “Exactly. Plus, I’m not a spy. Right, Captain? I’m an idol.”

“You’re a  _ what _ —” Yongbok squawks, and it all deteriorates from there.

“What’s your favorite?” Minho prompts.

Yongbok looks up shyly. “The newest one.  _ Heart Shaker _ .”

“The newest …?” Minho trails off. It makes sense, actually. They probably don’t have immediate access to new music over here. They don’t even have  _ internet _ , for God’s sake.

Wait.

If the latest TWICE song to reach North Korea is  _ Heart Shaker _ … then maybe what the captain said really is true.

No one here has ever heard of Minho. Or M3S.

As far as the North Korean music industry goes, Lee Minho doesn’t exist.

Well … at least not the M3S one.

“Are there … more?”

Minho laughs, short and loud, pulling himself out of his mini existential crisis to look up at Yongbok and his furrowed eyebrows. “Yes! So many more! Those sunbaes never take a rest.”

“Really?” Okay, Yongbok’s eyes are genuinely sparkling. How do they do that? “What’re they like?”

He and Yongbok are sitting together in the courtyard, watching the captain and his crew move around, preparing a meal. There’s a lovely breeze combing through Minho’s hair, and a soothing gray sky up above, and this is the most at peace he’s felt since this whole …  _ ordeal _ began.

“Ah, they’re amazing! Let me see … since  _ Heart Shaker _ , there’s been …” Minho starts counting on his fingers. “ _ What is Love? _ ,  _ Dance The Night Away _ ,  _ Yes or Yes _ ,  _ Fancy _ ,  _ Feel Special _ , and  _ More & More _ . At least, those are the Korean ones. They’ve done Japanese stuff, too, but—”

“That’s so many!”

Is it, like, genetically possible to have stars in your eyes? Did Yongbok put glitter in them? No … they probably don’t have glitter here.

“I can sing them for you?” Minho suggests, tentatively, because he’s not really sure how to explain what songs are like. His normal song introduction (“Fresh, catchy, and fun: it’s the song for summer!”) will definitely not work here. “I know the dances, too; I like learning them.”

“Can you teach me one?” Yongbok asks, and he must know it’s physically impossible to say no to him. “The music videos never have the full dance.”

“Of course!” Minho says, moving to stand up. Now he just has to remember the way  _ What is Love? _ starts.

“Hey,” the captain calls from where he’s sparking a flame into a pile of kindling, “no talking. Remember the rules?”

Ah, yes. The rules. The captain will send Minho on a boat-to-boat escape journey if and only if he 1. doesn’t talk to any of the men, 2. doesn’t “propagate South Korean beliefs,” whatever the fuck that means, and 3. listens to every single goddamn order they give him.

“I’ll show you later,” Minho whispers to Yongbok as he sits back down, before calling, “Good thinking! If you heard me sing, you’d want to keep me here forever.”

“We’d want to keep you buried deep underground forever,” says the newcomer. Always offering his opinion when absolutely no one asked for it.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Minho asks, leaning back on his palms.

“Seo Changbin,” he says, without hesitation. “Why?”

“So when our countries reunify, I can use my power as a top idol and send my fans after you. Make sure you never know peace again.”

“Pfft. Yeah, okay. You do that. What’s your name, top idol?”

“What do I look like, some sort of idiot? Why would I tell you my name?”

Yongbok snorts from where he’s seated next to Minho. It turns into a suspicious-sounding cough at a dirty look from Changbin.

Minho’s seated at the captain’s table with a meal placed in front of him again, and he is infinitely grateful that this one has no chance of being poisoned. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday morning, before he went paragliding, and judging from how his eyesight is starting to go blurry, it’s beginning to take its toll on him.

Curly Fry places a piece of meat on his plate, and Minho can only offer a grateful smile before practically inhaling it.

“Mmm,” he hums happily.

Changbin snorts. “You act like you haven’t had a meal in weeks.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Minho sees the captain stiffen a bit. But he brushes it off in lieu of responding honestly. “Well, a body like this doesn’t come from eating whatever I want. Idol life is more dieting than dancing.”

“Aha!” Changbin exclaims, gleeful. “See how South Korea starves even its most important citizens?”

“Aw,” Minho coos, placing a hand over his forehead and pretending to swoon. “You think I’m important?”

“You’re not starving,” Changbin says dryly.

But when Minho looks back down at his plate there is a small pile of meat that wasn’t there before. So with a secret smile and a chest a bit lighter than before, Minho stuffs his mouth joyfully full and sends a silent fuck-you to his diet.

And he allows himself to sit back and zone out, letting the conversation flow around him. Yongbok asks some question Minho isn’t paying attention to. Changbin chokes on a piece of kimchi and tries to play it off as a cough. Unsuccessfully.

Curly Fry smiles—oh, he’s got dimples, too—when Minho picks up a piece of meat to put on his plate.

And when Minho’s gaze falls to the captain, everything seems to slow down a bit.

It feels like something he was never supposed to see. But at the same time … Minho watches the way the captain stuffs his cheeks full of rice, the way his lips quirk when Changbin says something funny. The way his eyes crinkle, and his shoulders shake.

At the same time it feels right. Like  _ this _ is the version he’s supposed to see, not the stiff-necked, stone-faced soldier who pointed a gun at Minho.

_ I’ll remember you like this. _

No sooner does that thought occur to Minho than the captain’s eyes snap up to meet Minho’s. They both freeze, just for a second.

And then the smile leaves the captain’s eyes. He sits up straighter. Tighter. Like the reminder of Minho’s existence was a tug back into reality.

Minho looks back down at his lap and imagines his Emotional Support Cat crawling up onto his thigh.

She sticks her tail in Minho’s face and steals a piece of meat from his place. He lets her.

“Are you still going into Pyongyang tonight?” asks the little one—Jeongin, Minho reminds himself.

“Yeah,” the captain sighs, and—wait, what?

“Wait, what?” Minho looks to the captain. Soonie curls up in Minho’s lap, weightlessly comforting. “Where are you going?”

“Pyongyang. I have to go look into something.”

And that is just about the vaguest statement Minho’s ever heard—and he’s read  _ contracts _ , mind you—but it’s the least of his worries.

“So I’ll be here? Alone?”

“Yeah.” Minho tells himself it’s apology he sees in the captain’s eyes. “Just don’t, like … go outside. Don’t let anyone see you.”

“Well, that’s a given,” Minho says. “Don’t you worry about me, Captain. I can disappear like the best of ‘em.”

“How inspiring,” Changbin remarks, voice dry. Curly Fry giggles from across the table.

Minho beams. “I try.”

It’s quiet once the captain’s men leave.

Minho’s leaning against the doorframe, pretending to look out onto the courtyard so it doesn’t look like he’s standing there without a clue of what to do or where to be.

What he really wants is to find a nice patch of grass or even a semi-comfortable spot of hardwood floor and sleep for twenty hours.

If he carries on for much longer, he’ll fall asleep right where he’s standing. Or break down. Whichever comes first.

In the quiet, the aching seems to hit him all at once. All of it: the soreness of his muscles, the longing to be back home, the dull throb of a forming headache.

The sharp worry that he’ll never see Seungmin and Hyunjin again, that he’ll die here and never adopt a cat and never dance again, never sing again, never say hello to a crowd of people who understand him.

The white-hot pain of his knee from when he tripped and hurt it running away. That one’s particularly enthusiastic, screaming out whenever he so much as thinks about it.

But Minho breathes in some more. The sun’s come out a bit. It kisses Minho’s eyelids pink and his cheeks warm. There’s that breeze again, curling at the back of Minho’s neck.

If he keeps his eyes closed he can believe it’ll all be okay.

(It’s a fucking disaster, of course, but so was Hyunjin’s birthday cake last year, and none of them  _ died _ from food poisoning.)

“Hey,” comes the captain’s voice from behind him, and thank  _ God  _ for Minho’s sense of balance saving him from toppling over in shock. “Ah, sorry!” the captain says, stepping out next to Minho. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Minho turns to face him, hand still on his chest. ‘Startle you’ is a funny way to say ‘almost kill you,’ but he’ll take it.

“I’m …” the captain starts, soft and unsure. But he clears his throat and stands up a little straighter. “I’m going into the office now. I’ll be back later tonight.”

Minho nods.

“And, um. Just. Feel free to do whatever, use whatever. You found the bathroom earlier, right?” When Minho nods again, he continues. “Yeah, and just … keep inside the fence? Like we said earlier, y’know.”

Minho nods, and the captain looks like he’s going to leave, but—

“What if I need to contact you?”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that! Here …”

The captain goes back inside, and Minho follows him to … a telephone. A  _ landline _ telephone.

Minho didn’t think any house other than his grandmother’s still used these.

“Dial five if there’s an emergency; it’ll connect you to my office.”

“You’re lucky I still visit my grandmother,” Minho sighs.

The captain ignores him. “Only if it’s an emergency.”

“But of course,” Minho concedes. Rather graciously, if he does say so himself. “No need to worry; I’m very capable.”

Phone Call #1

“Company Five, Captain—”

“This is an emergency. Do you happen to have body wash? I looked everywhere, and I couldn’t find it.”

“There’s soap in the cupboard.”

Phone Call #2

“Company Five—”

“This is also an emergency. Do you have shampoo?”

“There’s soap in the cupboard.”

Phone Call #3

“Company—”

“This is an emergency! I’m not getting any hot water.”

“We don’t get hot water.”

“... excuse me?”

“There’s a cauldron outside. There’s water boiling in there. Just fill up the tub with the cold water that comes out, then take the bucket—if I’m remembering correctly, it’s right by the door of the kitchen—and fill that up with the boiling water. You can pour it into the tub. If you fill it up all the way and tuck the shower curtain all the way in, it should stay warm for a while.”

“The bucket … the silver one?”

“Yes! Be careful when you’re pouring, though. Don’t burn yourself.”

“I would never.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

Phone Call #4

“Another emergency! Do you have a scented candle? I need to have one when I take a bath. Or sleep. Normally I light one that’s scented like eucalyptus leaves and rain but I’m flexible! Is it in the cupboard too, or—”

Minho takes the phone away from his ear. The captain … hung up on him.

Hurtful, but Minho is a resilient fellow who does not let such petty things get to him.

So he marches into the bathroom with his metal bucket of boiling water; no body wash, no shampoo, no scented candle. Just him and his soap.

Minho hasn’t forgotten he’s in North Korea, but some things serve as pretty blatant reminders of just how different life is here.

He sighs, and runs a hand through his hair. North Korea or South, though, his hair is greasy and his muscles are stiff and it is  _ so _ not a vibe.

Because he doesn’t have his phone, and he doubts the captain owns both a record player and  _ Boys Be _ , and the silence here is a little too stifling, Minho sings.

His voice is scratchy and cracking from, well, everything, but the steam from the bath is kinda like that one weird water vapor machine Seungmin bought to soothe his vocal cords. Besides, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t sound good. No one’s around to hear. No one paid to listen. No one’s recording outside the dorm bathroom door to post on Twitter.

Singing for himself, not for an audience … it’s nice. Singing for the sole purpose of filling up an empty room. Singing so he doesn’t forget the sound of his own voice.

Singing so he can appreciate the true masterpiece that is Seventeen’s discography.

When the water’s gone cold and Minho’s fingers are wrinkled up like raisins, he untucks the shower curtain and steps out.

“Fallin’ for you, fallin’ for you,” he sings. “Fallin’ for you once again.”

He steals a towel—at least they have these, thank God—and reluctantly gets dressed in the same clothes he was wearing before. He’ll have to annoy the captain into buying him some new ones; he might be getting out of here in two days, but that doesn’t mean he should have to keep wearing this! He feels like a walking atrocity.

Well. Limping atrocity.

Somehow, that’s even worse.

The thought brings Minho’s attention to his knee. He cleaned it as best he could, but it still looks bad. Maybe he can annoy the captain into buying him some Band-Aids, too.

Minho walks out into the hallway. 

The bath helped some, but his body still feels kinda like it’s made of wood, so he finds himself a semi-comfortable spot of hardwood floor and drops into his stretch routine, humming  _ Don’t Wanna Cry _ as he starts his lunges.

Having done this routine practically every morning and night for years, it’s a mindless sort of familiarity. Even in this captain’s house, in the middle of a military village in North Korea—decidedly very different from the practice rooms back home—Minho feels at ease.

And then the lights go out.

Minho no longer feels at ease.

He hadn’t realized it had gotten so dark out, but it couldn’t be more obvious now. Minho can barely make out his own shaking hands in front of him.

Relax, he tells himself. This is just like that mannequin prank from  _ Going Seventeen _ .

Except, of course, the teeny tiny difference of Seventeen being on a show and Minho being in a captain’s house in the middle of a military village in North Korea.

It’s the little things that count, right?

Minho stands up from his child’s pose as gracefully as he can. Which, given the fact that he can barely see and he hasn’t slept and his knee is injured, is not very graceful, but that’s neither here nor there.

He makes his way over to the nearest wall. There’s gotta be a flashlight in here  _ somewhere _ , right?

And then, as if Minho doesn’t have enough to worry about right now, there’s a loud bang outside.

It sounds like … a gate. Closing.

Minho barely has time to hope it’s not the gate of  _ this _ house before he hears footsteps, getting louder, and the unmistakable sound of a door opening, louder still.

Of course it was the gate of this house. Minho is going to die, slowly and painfully, at the hands of whoever decided to intrude in this captain’s house.

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough to see a big vase on the floor by the window. He picks it up, figuring he should go down fighting, or whatever the fuck heroes do.

The footsteps get closer, and closer, and closer, and Minho raises the vase above his head when he knows the intruder is about to step inside.

Then the intruder steps inside. Despite knowing it would happen, Minho doesn’t really feel prepared, but that won’t stop him from smashing this vase over the intruder’s intruding little head.

“What the hell?”

Okay.  _ That _ stops him from smashing the vase over the intruder’s head.

Because the intruder is not an intruder at all. It’s the captain, who’s ducked over a little, wide-eyed and tense.

“Don’t ‘What the hell’ me!” Minho says furiously. “I should be asking you that! What the hell are you doing here?”

The captain reaches into the bag Minho didn’t notice he was carrying. “You, um. Said you needed a candle.”

And so he brings out a candle.

There’s a big rush of something in Minho’s chest. It might be the adrenaline leaving, or reality settling back in, or the realization that the captain came all the way home to bring Minho a candle.

He’s had enough of all these big somethings. He’s exhausted. His arms ache.

“You said you need to have it, right?” the captain asks, shifting on his feet when Minho doesn’t move. “When you take a bath. Or sleep.”

“No,” Minho croaks. There’s a burning in his eyes. It might be tears. “I need a scented candle. This is just a regular candle.”

The captain reaches forward, and if Minho had any conviction left in his body he’d flinch away. But he doesn’t, so he doesn’t, and the captain carefully takes the vase out of Minho’s hands.

That, it seems, breaks the dam. Minho’s shoulders start to shake as his eyes flood, then spill, and the captain guides him down to the table.

“Sorry,” Minho manages to say. He looks up at the captain and immediately regrets it; there’s too much sympathy in there. The captain’s eyes are wide, and glittering like he might cry too. He looks like Hyunjin when M3S got their first win, like Seungmin when Minho told him—

The captain strikes a match. Minho startles at the sound, clumsily wiping away the tears clinging to his chin, and watches as the captain lights the unscented candle.

Illuminated by nothing more than the cautious flicker of the flame, the captain looks younger. Less … worried. Less like he’s got the weight of the world on his back.

Minho gets that. It’s easier to be when you’re in the dark.

“It’s just a power outage,” the captain says, and it takes a second for Minho to realize he’s talking about the lights going out.

They fall back into silence.

“Do you …” Minho starts. It’s half a sob, but he’ll take it. “Do you know anything about the idol industry?”

The captain doesn’t respond. Minho takes that as an invitation to keep going, wrapping his arms around his own waist in a feeble attempt to keep himself in one piece.

“It’s fucking  _ brutal _ . You know, when we first started, my company decided to put us through a reality survival show. For promotion,” Minho sniffles. “Competitions and evaluations. I got eliminated,” he says, loud and honest. “I forgot the lyrics when we were performing for an evaluation. Five years of training just …” he gestures vaguely, then wipes at his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “Down the drain. Just like that.”

Minho watches the candle, watches the light seep into the crack in the wood of the dining table.

“Right now,” he says, quiet. “I feel even more hopeless than I did back then. And—fuck,” he sobs, running a hand through his still-wet hair. “I just. Everything is wrong.”

“Here,” the captain says, suddenly. “Wait a second.” He stands up, and walks out of the room, and Minho feels like he’s going to cave in.

But the captain returns, and he’s got … a towel? He holds it out in front of Minho, who stares at it cluelessly.

The fuck is he supposed to do with a towel?

The captain sighs, quiet enough for Minho to think he wasn’t supposed to hear, and kneels in front of Minho.

When Minho continues staring cluelessly, the captain sighs—louder, this time; Minho was definitely meant to hear this one—and slings the towel over Minho’s head.

He carefully pushes Minho’s head down, and rubs the towel over Minho’s hair.

His touch is … gentle. More gentle than Minho would have guessed. Like Minho’s a figure of glass. A vase ready to shatter. A mine under his foot.

Which isn’t entirely incorrect.

“You got eliminated before, right?” comes the captain’s voice. “And now you’re, to use your own words, a top idol. Everything may be wrong now, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stay wrong.”

The captain deems his drying done and pulls the towel away. Minho blinks at him. They’re close. He can feel the captain’s breath on his chin.

“You …” he starts, looking bewildered. “Your hair changed color.”

“What?” Minho asks, before pulling one of the strands of his newly-dried and, now, fluffy hair down in front of his face. “Oh! Yeah, well. It’s not like I can get another dye job while I’m here. Figured I might as well wash out the color now so it doesn’t grow out all weird.”

He’ll miss the orange, but he doesn’t want his roots showing. Besides. He’s a different person now. New country, new Minho!

The captain nods enthusiastically, even though Minho suspects he didn’t understand a single bit of what Minho said.

It’s okay, he thinks, because the captain doesn’t understand most things about Minho, but Minho is still safe with him.

Of course, the second Minho realizes this, the captain stands up. He places the bag slung around his shoulder at Minho’s feet, before saying, “I still have to go to Pyongyang tonight.”

“Okay,” Minho says, more interested in guessing what’s in the bag. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know. It might be a couple of days.”

“But,” Minho furrows his eyebrows, looking up. “Aren’t I leaving in two days?” The thought of the captain not being there when he leaves … doesn’t feel right.

“Yeah.” The captain is bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands clasped together. “Don’t worry; if I’m not here, then the others’ll make sure everything goes smoothly.”

_ That’s not what I was worried about _ , Minho says in his mind.

“Okay,” Minho says out loud.

And the captain turns towards the door, without so much as a goodbye, and that simply won’t do, so—

“Can I know your name?” he blurts out. Without thinking, of course, because when’s the last time he thought before he spoke?

The captain looks back at him, one eyebrow raised.

Damn, it’s not like Minho asked him for his Social Security number.

“I just want to remember you,” Minho says, shrugging. “And so when our countries reunify, I can treat you to some bubble tea to thank you.”

The captain makes an indecipherable face. “It’d … be better for you to just forget everything. Once you go back.”

Minho smiles reassuringly. Well. Attempts to smile reassuringly. He’d rate his success a six out of ten. “Then I guess I’ll just thank you now.”

The captain’s mouth doesn’t move, but something in his eyes shifts.

Or maybe it’s just the candle sputtering behind Minho.

“Thank you,” Minho says, and he doesn’t like how much it feels like a goodbye.

He also doesn’t like how he feels … kind of sad at the thought of a goodbye.

It seems there are a lot of things Minho doesn’t like about his current situation.

The door shuts noisily behind the captain.

Minho doesn’t like that, either.

Inside the bag is shampoo, conditioner, body wash, a box of Band-Aids, and a pile of sweaters and comfortable-looking pants.

Wow, Minho thinks gleefully as he reads the label on the shampoo bottle. It’s from the South. So there’s a secret market of Southern products here.

_ I should’ve complained about the state of my face. Maybe he would’ve bought me skincare products. _

He resolves to do that when he sees the captain again.

He opens the Band-Aids next. He presses two down, side by side on his knee and stretches his leg out to test how they fit.

They’re not the Hello Kitty ones Hyunjin keeps in the dorm, but they’ll do.

Then he turns to the clothes. Which are … interesting.

Definitely not things he’d pick out at home. But South Korean idols stuck in North Korea can’t be choosers, and they look warm, and the patterns are kinda cute.

He strips off his old clothes and wriggles happily into the new ones. A blue and yellow sweater, checkerboard style. Simple black pants. They fit nicely, if a little snug. Good for the colder weather.

Minho walks back into the bathroom, because apparently the captain has no other mirrors in his house. His dark-haired, newly sweatered reflection is a good bit away from the last time he looked in this mirror, but it’s … not a bad change.

He snorts out loud. Of course it’s not a bad change. Lee Minho can rock any look. North Korean style is no exception.

After admiring himself in the mirror for a bit, Minho goes back to stretching, this time humming  _ Thanks _ because he feels it fits the situation. And because it’s a great song.

He imagines Soonie padding her way around the room and curling up next to Minho.

He wonders how Seungmin and Hyunjin are doing. He thinks of what he’d be doing right now if he were still in Seoul.

He takes the candle and walks around the house, stopping once he sees the bookshelf.

(No Seventeen albums. Minho feels like that meme. Disappointed but not surprised.)

It’s later, much later, when Minho hears a loud bang on the gate. He nearly drops the candle on his foot, and he barely has time to register what happened when someone yells from outside,

“Random house inspection! Open up!”

Well … fuck. That’s not good.

Minho gathers enough of his senses to put the candle out before dashing through the house.

Why are there no good hiding places in this house? Why did the captain not consider the fact that one day there might be a particularly sexy South Korean idol hiding out in his house alone when he was doing his interior design?

And why did the captain not consider the fact that there might be a—what did they call it? a random house inspection?—directly after he decides to leave for Pyongyang on a trip of indeterminate length?

Minho scrambles out into the courtyard, heart beating up in his throat. He can hear voices coming from the other side of the gate.

He scans his surroundings, praying there’s  _ something _ , and his vision zeroes in on what looks … like a cellar. It’s covered in some sort of tarp.

It looks shady, if Minho’s being honest. But it also looks like his best option. So Minho races across the courtyard, lifts up the door just enough to slip inside, and throws himself into the dark.

All he can hear is his heartbeat.

And, albeit more quietly,  _ Boomboom _ , because it’s stuck in his head. He focuses on that instead of his heartbeat, because he’s really not trying to think about how scared he is.

He breathes in, breathes out.

Mmm. Smells like kimchi in here. He has half a mind to look for some to snack on.

But those plans are thrown away when there’s a clattering from directly above him. Minho feels his heart stop.

There’s the sound of voices.

And then there’s a rectangle of light on the floor of the cellar beside Minho, as the random house inspectors lift up the door.

Well. Minho had a good run.

Although, twenty-seven isn’t that old considering the average life expectancy for men these days is … wait. What  _ is  _ the average life expectancy for men? Is it eighty? Ninety?

“There’s—there’s someone in here!”

Well, Minho thinks. At least he knows the average life expectancy for particularly sexy South Korean idols in North Korea. It’s twenty-seven.

He hears the sound of a gun being cocked.

“Come out!”

_ I’m gay! _ is what he almost says. But his sense of self-preservation kicks in at the last second, and he ducks his head, raises his hands, and puts one foot in front of the other until he’s climbed out of the cellar.

The cold, metal head of a gun is pressed into the side of Minho’s neck.

A million voices start talking at once.

“Who is that?”

“Who are you?”

“I’ve never seen him before …”

Minho chances a look up. He immediately wishes he hadn’t, because all the faces are blurring together but  _ God _ is there a lot of them.

The gun at his neck pushes him out, out, past the gate of the captain’s house and into the street.

There’s a cloud of gasping all around him. All of Minho’s nerves are on fire. The gun head isn’t cold anymore; it’s warmed up from the contact with Minho’s skin.

The murmuring is even louder out here, and when Minho chances a second look up he sees a crowd of what must be the other villagers.

“Who is that?”

“What’s all the fuss? I can’t see.”

“Was he in there?”

“Even mutes can talk at the State Security Department.”

Minho is burning alive. His mind goes into overdrive, helpfully supplying all the painful possibilities of Minho’s future it can provide.

Through the haze of panic, he recognizes one of the voices as the woman who screamed ‘Random house inspection’ earlier. He watches a lot of  _ King of Masked Singer _ .

If only his aptitude for vocal recognition could save him now.

“Why were you hiding in Captain Han’s kimchi cellar?” that woman shouts, sparking even more gasping and murmuring in the cluster of spectators.

What is a kimchi cellar? And—oh, is that his name? Han?

“Why were you in there?” she screams, and the gun prods at Minho’s neck again, and he’s really thinking  _ Just end it here _ , because the only alternative is ending it at the State Security Department, which doesn’t sound like a nice end to the life of Lee Minho.

There’s more clamoring from around him, and Minho is weighing the pros and cons of a public execution like this when the crowd parts like the sea.

A pair of headlights blinds Minho. He’s blinking away the spots in his vision and cursing the existence of LED headlights when he sees the driver step out.

By the time he can see properly, the driver is ten feet away. And the driver … is the captain. Captain Han, apparently.

Minho’s brain is a loop of  _ How the fuck are you here? _ ,  _ Why the fuck are you here? _ , and  _ I’m so fucking glad you’re here _ , and it only comes to a stop when the captain—Captain Han, now—meets his eyes.

The Captain Han of now is worlds away from the Captain Han that dried Minho’s hair just hours earlier. He seems bigger, taller, and there’s a set to his shoulders that commands attention, commands respect.

His eyes are locked with Minho’s, big and dark and safe, and Minho breathes. Han’s got him.

“Excuse me,” Captain Han says, gaze on someone beside Minho. The gun presses harder into Minho’s neck. “Would you mind putting away the gun you’re pointing at my fiancé?”

Gasps overtake the crowd once again.

“He’s engaged?”

“He has a fiancé?”

“He’s gay?”

And … well. Of all the people in North Korea to pretend to be engaged to, Minho thinks, looking at Han’s pretty eyes and trembling mouth, it could be worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this whole fic is just . unstoppable force vs immovable object huh  
> plus minho being a carat lmao
> 
> [baby playlist:](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2EJG-r4L00LmjNZgwdrPf8Rpun5ezUQO)  
> Far Too Young To Die — Panic! At The Disco  
> Don’t Wanna Cry — SEVENTEEN  
> Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes — Fall Out Boy  
> 20 — SEVENTEEN  
> I Run To You — Lady Antebellum
> 
> 'most likely to die by getting lost in a forest' was an actual superlative the teachers at my school awarded each other .. rip mr harold
> 
> pls leave kudos n comments if u liked it :D  
> or hmu on my [tumblr](https://taeyeonsb.tumblr.com/) <3
> 
> okay see yall next time !! mwah !!


	3. take an angel by the wings (ask her for the strength to stay)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for reasons unrelated to me stealing my sisters switch to play animal crossing it has taken me a long time to write this chapter
> 
> yes i stayed up till 7am to finish this and what about it
> 
> also ! i have finally decided on m3s’s fandom name: comets ! i might go back and update this in the earlier chapters .. i might not
> 
> [tinie playlist](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2EJG-r4L00LmjNZgwdrPf8Rpun5ezUQO) in the end notes <3
> 
> chapter title from angel by the wings by sia <3
> 
> love yall . thank u for ur sweet comments . mwah !

“What did you just say?”

The gun at Minho’s neck doesn’t waver, no matter how much Minho wants it to.

“I said,” Captain Han says, low. Commanding. “Please put down the gun you’re pointing at my fiancé.”

“I didn’t know you were engaged,” says the man holding the gun. But he finally— _finally_ —lowers it.

Han reaches forward and grasps Minho’s wrist, tugging Minho away from the man, away from the woman. Away from the gun. Minho feels like he can breathe again.

“Do you have identification?” the man with the gun asks, intense and intent.

Han shifts next to him.

“Pyongyang official identification?” the man repeats. If he didn’t sound angry before, now he does.

Seeing as he _did_ sound angry before, now he just sounds angrier.

“My fiancé,” Han starts, eyes flickering but voice steady, “came from South Korea.”

Oh, how Minho hopes Han knows what he’s doing. And that no one in this crowd is secretly a Comet. And that the guy with the gun doesn’t decide to just shoot Minho point blank. And that house inspector doesn’t go berserk and just kill Minho with her bare hands; he doesn’t doubt that she could. She looks livid.

A lot relies on hope when you’re in North Korea, apparently.

“He is from Division Eleven,” Han continues.

There are more gasps. Minho’s starting to get used to them at this point; they remind him of the gasps at fansigns whenever Seungmin and Hyunjin touch.

Han smiles. Minho knows this smile: professional, and put-together, and hiding a flood. Minho’s seen it on Hyunjin, on Seungmin, on every single other idol he sees. On himself, too.

“You’ll understand that I can’t give you any more information,” Han says, politely. Delicately. “I wouldn’t want to violate the policies of Division Eleven, after all.”

The man with the gun looks … displeased, to say the least. Minho couldn’t guess why beyond that the population of North Korea just seems to be generally unpleasant.

“My fiancé just got home.” At that, Minho feels all the eyes in the vicinity slide to him. He pretends it’s his adoring Comets and not a mob of North Koreans, all of whom could probably murder Minho and make it look like an accident. “It was a long trip, and he’s exhausted.”

And … there it is. Minho is this captain’s beloved (untrue), and he has just returned from a very long journey (partially true), and he is exhausted (very true).

“I’m gonna touch you,” Minho whispers, trying not to move his mouth, as he does what every exhausted man would do after just returning to his beloved from a very long journey: wraps an arm around Han’s waist and pulls him closer, allowing his head to rest on Han’s shoulder.

And Han goes with it, leans into Minho the way he would if he really was Minho’s to hold.

And Han … Han is shorter than him.

This is … unexpected. Although Minho can’t quite place why.

It’s not like _Minho’s_ short—sure, he doesn’t remember the average height for men, but he can’t be _that_ far below it. He’s met plenty of people shorter than him, even if his loving bandmates fall outside of that particular category and spend a good three-quarters of their time with Minho reminding him of it.

Maybe it’s unexpected because Minho never thought he’d get close enough to find out.

And yet. Here he is. Close enough to find out.

Han clears his throat, and Minho startles at the vibration. Ah, yes. That’s right. They are in the middle of a rather precarious situation and it is not the time to be thinking about how Han is shorter than him, at least by an inch, maybe two, and if Minho—

“I think we’d better go get some rest,” Han says, and it’s pleasant but firm, and the next thing Minho knows he’s being guided back up the stairs and Han is sliding the gate closed behind them.

Han stays rigid until they’re standing in the courtyard behind the house, out of sight of the surely-prying eyes of the villagers, and Minho stays with his arm around Han’s waist until Han closes the door of the house.

And … okay.

What the fuck.

Minho is still alive.

Thank God, too, because Minho would never forgive himself if he was shot and killed for hiding in some shady cellar that smells like kimchi. What an unsexy way to go.

Minho is still alive, because Captain Han … came in some car and told a crowd of North Koreans Minho is his fiancé.

They’re in the kitchen, and Han is standing at the stove, clattering around with something, and Minho’s eyes trace the slope of his shoulders as the questions bubble up inside him.

When Han turns around, _How the fuck are you here?_ , _Why the fuck are you here?_ , and _I’m so fucking glad you’re here_ all seem to spill out of Minho at once in a single jumbled sentence that goes somewhat like “How the fucking glad are you’re here.”

Minho’s articulacy … it’s a gift, really.

Han ignores him, and presses something across the kitchen counter and into Minho’s hands.

Minho’s first thought is a scented candle, because he’s a dreamer at heart.

Minho’s second thought is a mine, or some other sort of bomb or grenade or grenadine or whatever the hell North Korea wants to use to kill him, because he’s in North Korea and North Korea wants to kill him.

But it’s none of those things. It’s a mug, warm against Minho’s palms. It settles something inside Minho he hadn’t realized was unsettled.

He raises it up to his mouth, letting the steam of the tea rise and curl against his cheeks, gentle and sweet.

“Are you okay?” Han asks, and that settles something inside Minho, too, as Minho looks at Han and his lovely earnest eyes and realizes that he _means_ it.

Minho pauses, just for a second, just to let his breath go and his shoulders fall, just to take in the dizzying feeling of being cared for.

“Are you hurt?” Han presses on, and it breaks Minho out of his daze.

He shakes his head, and Han looks on with something like relief.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think they’d conduct an inspection tonight. You must have been frightened.”

Inside Minho are two wolves. One is crying from the feeling of being validated. The other is scoffing at the mere idea that someone _this_ sexy experiences fear.

Minho compromises and takes a sip of his tea. It’s a strange taste, but it sends this lovely warmth all through his body.

“What kind of tea is this?” he asks.

Once again, Han ignores him. “I know this was just the excuse for getting out of there, but you really should get some sleep.”

“How did you get here so fast? I thought you were going to be in Pongpang for a week.”

Han hooks his finger in the elbow of Minho’s sweater and tugs him out of the kitchen. “You can sleep in this room—”

“And what is Division Eleven? Everyone lost their shit when you said that. Is it some sort of badass torture facility? ‘Cause if so, that is peak sexy and very mysterious and I would let them poison me any day.”

Han strikes a match to light a candle and sets it on the nightstand before turning to leave.

“And—oh, what is a kimchi cellar?”

Han pauses at that, and leans against the doorframe. “It’s where we store our foods to ferment.”

“Like a kimchi fridge?” Minho exclaims, bouncing up on his toes. “That’s so cool!”

“You’ve been up for a while, now,” Han says, instead of acknowledging that yes, it is cool.

Well … that’s okay. Not everyone is blessed with good taste like Minho is.

Minho shrugs. “This is nothing.” He promptly ignores the ringing in his ears and the static behind his eyes. “Last promotion season I broke my all-time record of fifty-two hours awake. This is nothing.”

“You already said that,” Han says quietly, hand on the doorknob. “Get some rest, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”

The door closes, and Minho does what he does best: topple into bed and make himself into a blanket burrito.

The art of blanket burritoing is one he has long since mastered, and Minho flops onto his back in a record twenty-three seconds, successfully burritoed.

He watches the candlelight flicker warm patches across the ceiling like a blank canvas, and he imagines Soonie climbing up onto the blanket to walk all over him.

She brushes her tail against his face. At that point, it might be a dream.

The door clicks open, then clicks closed.

It's dark, and quiet enough in the kitchen that Seungmin can hear Hyunjin's shoes landing on the shoe rack beside their door from where he always kicks them off.

Seungmin can almost hear Minho's shoes clattering to the floor right after. Minho thinks there's no point to shoe racks, because why buy a glorified dish drying rack when your shoes aren't dishes.

Hyunjin points a Hello Kitty-socked foot at the shoe rack. "We should get rid of it. In his honor."

Maybe Hyunjin was reminded of the same thing, or maybe he's gained the ability to read minds, or maybe Seungmin has truly lost it and said all that out loud.

At this point, they're all viable options.

"Yeah," Seungmin says. "Every time a shoe goes on that shoe rack, five years are taken off his lifespan."

Hyunjin places a longing hand on his chest, looking forlornly into the distance. "If you listen closely enough, you can hear him yelling about how shoes aren't dishes."

"Even though he ate cereal out of my shoes on V Live."

"That hyung and his double standards," Hyunjin sighs, "seriously."

"He really is one of a kind."

Hyunjin's standing in the doorway of the kitchen now, leaning against the wall. "Are you making tea?"

And Seungmin's got the kettle on, and a mug on the counter with the telltale string of a teabag hanging out, but he doesn't have the heart to tease Hyunjin about his observation skills.

So he takes the kettle off the burner and carries it to the tap, pouring in enough water for a second cup.

Hyunjin reaches up in the cupboard that only he is tall enough to access without going on tiptoe (Seungmin) or climbing up onto the counter (Minho) and brings down a mug. The white one that says _Kiss me I'm ❤ Confused_.

Seungmin snorts. The kettle starts whistling. "Isn't that hyung's?"

He pours some water into it anyway.

Hyunjin rummages around in their tea box. "Yeah, well," he starts absentmindedly. "Hyung's not here right now."

And … well.

Hyunjin seems to fold in on himself, and the next thing Seungmin knows he's staring at the narrow stretch of wall underneath the cabinets.

There's a half-melted ice cube down there. Hyunjin is sniffling. Hot tears sprawl down Seungmin's face.

Minho's not here.

"I'm so scared, Minnie," Hyunjin chokes, reaching out blindly until he finds Seungmin's hand.

"Me too," Seungmin chokes back, squeezing Hyunjin's hand until the crescents of his nails may as well be tattoos on Hyunjin's palm and it feels so damn _empty_ in this kitchen without Minho and his dumb laugh and his weird hoodies.

"You don't think something … _bad_ happened, right?"

And there it is. The police have no leads as of ten minutes ago, when Seungmin last checked. JYP is refusing to get involved with the searching, because M3S is technically on break.

But he refuses to think the worst. And he refuses to let Hyunjin do it, too.

"Hyung can get through anything," Seungmin says, tasting salt, and the words are heavy on his tongue, a reassurance and a plea all at once. "You remember what he always says, don't you?"

Hyunjin clumsily rubs his tears into his cheeks. "’Go crazy, go stupid’?"

Seungmin giggles, despite himself. "Well … yes, but that's not what I'm thinking of."

"I think it applies plenty well," Hyunjin says. He adjusts himself on the floor to face Seungmin, and pulls his sweater over his hand to dry the tears clinging to Seungmin's jaw. "Wherever he landed, he went crazy and went stupid and he's crazily, stupidly trying to come back home."

Seungmin sighs. "Yeah, I bet he did. Our crazy, stupid hyung."

Hyunjin lifts a shaky hand to his shaky smile, and takes a sip from his mug. He makes a face—a spectacle of one, with his eyes scrunched closed and his tongue sticking out. "Forgot to add the teabag."

And that really has no right making Seungmin laugh this hard, but Seungmin hasn’t slept, and neither has Hyunjin, and it’s like the constant worry eating away at them has finally ceased, if only for the moment where Hyunjin tries to clap his hands together and forgets he’s holding a mug of hot water and spills it all over his sweater, and all over Seungmin’s too, and Seungmin can’t quite breathe anymore but it’s a nice change of cause.

They don’t sleep but Hyunjin washes his face and Seungmin sets up the next episode of _The Office_ , which Minho doesn’t like to watch with them, and that’s enough for now.

“Minho is okay,” Seungmin mumbles into the sleeve of his hoodie. “Minho will be okay.”

“Hell yeah he will.”

 _Please,_ Seungmin thinks. _Please, please, please. Please let him be okay._

Minho feels distinctly like he has been run over by a truck.

No. Scratch that. Several trucks. And not even the cool kind he’s seen in war dramas with the weird spiky armor attached to the front. Just the eighteen-wheelers he’s scared to drive next to on the highway.

All in all, it’s not a completely unfair comparison to what he’s gone through.

But Lee Minho is not a quitter, so he slides his truck-battered body out of … wait. Whose bed is this? There’s sunlight pouring in through the window. There’s a candle on the nightstand, half-gone. The quilt is gray and blue and white and very soft and very comfortable and very inviting and Minho _could_ get right back under it and sleep until it’s time to board that boaty-boat.

Wait. He might be onto something with that idea.

And he’s clambering back up onto the bed in a remarkably graceful manner to do just that when his knee decides to make its pain known once again.

Ah. Minho knew he was forgetting something.

He mourns the loss of what could have been twenty more hours of sleep— _twenty hours_ , God, fuck his knee—as he shuffles out of the bedroom. It’s probably Han’s room; North Korea doesn’t strike Minho as the type to encourage having guest rooms in your house.

So that means he was in Han’s bed. Where Han sleeps.

That is … an interesting thought to be having.

_Alright, Minho. No more thoughts from now on._

He finds the bag of things Han brought him and fishes out the shampoo and conditioner and body wash because yes he took a bath yesterday but it doesn’t count because he wasn’t properly equipped. And he takes a breath.

He knows his next destination is the bathroom, but one press of the back of his hand to his cheek is telling him his skin hasn't taken kindly to being neglected for two days in a row.

And then he rolls his eyes at himself. He's Lee Minho, for goodness’ sake. Textured skin is beautiful, and he will be sexy with bumps on his forehead.

North Korean chic.

So when Minho heads back into the bathroom it’s with a high head and the candle that was in Han’s room last night; it may not be scented, but he’ll have to make do.

Improvise, adapt, overcome, right?

After dressing and stretching and wishing he had Hyunjin’s foam rollers to steal, Minho rummages back through the bag and replaces his Band-Aids, wishing Han had picked him up a pack of Oreos, too.

Once he’s reaffirmed that the Band-Aids move with his leg, he wanders out into the hallway.

What to do today … what to do today.

The idea of just going back to sleep comes back, along with the idea of looking through Han’s bookshelf to see if he has anything good, or even find a relatively open space to practice the choreo to _Clap_ so he doesn’t forget it.

Maybe he should find some paper and write a will. Just in case. He already knows he will give Seungmin his entire set of Moomin collector’s edition books—the only books he owns—and he will give Hyunjin his _Kiss me I’m ❤ Confused_ mug because Hyunjin always steals it anyway and he will give his espresso machine to no one because no one can be trusted with Minho’s most treasured possession.

_Wait … that’s lowkey a galaxy-brain idea._

He pokes around the bookshelf until he sees something that looks like a stack of paper.

And lo and behold … it is a stack of paper. Crazy how the world works sometimes.

Minho sits down at the table, criss-cross applesauce, and he’s poised to write—this is a will; should it be fancy? should he use calligraphy?—when he has another idea.

Never one to deny himself the joy of acting on impulse, he starts scribbling down something else.

When he’s finished, there’s one piece of paper left, and he’s planning to use that to write a will after all, but when he hears Han in the kitchen, he is reminded that some questions of his were left unanswered last night.

That simply won’t do.

“So!” he starts, because making an entrance is what he does. He sees Han jump at the sudden noise, and mentally congratulates himself. “What _is_ Division Eleven?”

“Careful, I could have dropped this,” Han whines, and he almost looks like he’s …

_Oh my God._

Han is pouting.

Han is _pouting_ , and his eyes are all big and his cheeks are all squishy and it all hits Minho at once: Han, a whole ass North Korean military captain, looks like the fucking pleading emoji.

Minho is experiencing no thoughts, but his head is very full.

“Stop!” he says weakly. It’s more of a reflex than anything, because he needs something to say. “I could’ve dropped my croissant.”

Goddammit. North Korea is stealing his sanity. He’s turning into Hyunjin.

If he doesn’t get out of here soon, he’ll start banging tables when he laughs and somersaulting instead of walking.

“But … you don’t have a croissant?” Han says, like a confirmation, and he looks even _more_ like the pleading emoji now that he’s confused, but Minho doesn’t have time to internally scream about that.

“No, it’s a Vine reference.”

“Am I supposed to know what a Vine is?” Han asks, and there’s a tiny smile curving his mouth.

Is Minho supposed to believe that this guy—this teeny tiny pleading emoji—is the North Korean military captain who saved him from death just last night?

“Well, if you hadn’t heard of me,” Minho muses, “I suppose it’s unlikely you’d’ve heard of Vine.”

“I see,” Han says, not really sounding like he _does_ see.

Minho decides to let that slide, purely out of the goodness of his heart. “Vines are short videos.”

Even with Minho’s elaborate and in-depth explanation, Han still seems lost. Minho, dubbing it as a you-gotta-experience-it-for-yourself kinda thing, resolves to show Han a Vine compilation after reunification and moves on.

“So … Division Eleven?”

Han places the thing he was holding down on the counter in front of Minho.

It is a bowl of noodles.

Oh, the memories.

At least Minho can be fairly certain this one isn't full of poison.

 _Honestly, at this point even if it_ was _poisoned I'd still fuckin' eat it._

Minho happily dips his spoon in, filling it with broth.

"Careful," Han warns, watching Minho slurp up all the broth very sexily. "It's … hot."

 _So am I,_ Minho wants to say, but his mouth is filled with boiling broth and his tongue is burning.

Han is half amused and half concerned. At least … that's how he looks through Minho's teary eyes.

He hands over a cup of water and Minho takes it gratefully.

Maybe he should wait a bit for it to cool off before eating any more.

That resolution lasts for about six seconds, before hunger wins over common sense and he picks up a rather large mouthful of noodles.

Mmm. Minho could honestly sit here all day and just eat noodles.

His mind is a loop of _Noodles noodles noodles. ‘Noodles’ doesn't even sound like a word anymore. Noodlenoodlenoodle._

And—wait a minute.

Is Han trying to distract Minho with a bowl of yummy noodles?

Yes.

And is it working?

… yes.

"Hey! You can't distract me! I am too sexy to be fooled!" is what Minho says.

"Ay! Youcamasami! Imamookiobefoo!" is likely what Han hears, given that Minho was talking through his rather large mouthful of noodles.

Han raises his eyebrows, pausing with his chopsticks in the air. "I'm sorry?"

"What's Division Eleven?" Minho presses, rather than bothering to repeat himself.

"It's the division in charge of special missions in the South."

 _Was that so hard_ , is what Minho wants to say, but then he takes in what Han actually said.

"Special missions?"

Han nods.

"Like … secret missions?"

Han nods.

"Like … spy missions?"

Han nods.

"Wow," Minho says, leaning back against the counter. "Makes sense."

"Yeah," Han shrugs.

Minho’s always suspected he has the sexy and mysterious energy worthy of being a spy. And this just confirms it.

"There was no other way to explain your accent." Han reaches forward to gesture at Minho's hair, artfully hanging in front of his eyes. "Or your hair."

"My hair?" Minho brushes an indignant hand through said hair.

"Yep. It's way too long." Han offers that tiny smile again. "And it's styled weirdly."

Minho truly cannot believe this slander. How tasteless these North Koreans must be! His hair is the eighth wonder of the world.

He gives Han a dazzling smile. "Be nice, Captain. After all, it is your beloved fiancé you're talking to."

Han rolls his eyes, barely concealing a smile of his own. "Well, my beloved fiancé, would you like to get a haircut from _your_ beloved fiancé?"

Minho giggles, waving a hand. "No, I would not. There are countless Tumblr blogs purely dedicated to advocating for the preservation of my long hair. I'd hate to have them hunt you down after reunification."

"That's lovely," Han beams. "But I wasn't asking. You look like a ghost."

"The North Korean authorities are harsh indeed," Minho laments. "Can this ghost at least finish eating first?"

True to word, Minho follows when Han heads into the bathroom, and he only flinches a little at the touch of the cold metal blades against his ear.

“Be careful,” Minho says, shivering. He’s sitting on the edge of the bathtub, Han standing behind him in the bathtub so he doesn’t have to clean up.

Han’s free hand comes down to rest on his shoulder. “Don’t move, then.”

“And keep it long-ish,” Minho pleads. “Think of my poor, vulnerable neck, exposed to the frigid winter air!”

Han snorts. “I’ll keep it however long I keep it.”

Despite his words, he does keep it long-ish. And he is careful.

If Minho closes his eyes and deeply engages his imagination, he’s backstage at the AAAs, and it’s his stylist applying enough hairspray to make his hair resemble the delightful crunch of Hot Cheetos.

But Han’s hands are a lot less rushed and a lot more gentle than Minho’s stylist’s. His fingers comb through Minho’s hair, soft and slow, and there’s the methodic _snip-snip_ of what Minho is certain are not hair-cutting scissors but kitchen scissors. And there’s silence, which can’t be found at any awards show whatsoever.

“Stop humming,” Han says quietly. “I need to concentrate.”

Minho hadn’t realized he was.

“I think you need a little music in your life.”

“What I need,” Han says, deceptively sweet, “is silence. So I don’t accidentally—” he brings the scissors right around to Minho’s forehead, a mere inch from the roots, “—cut your hair too short.”

“Aw, you wouldn’t do that to your beloved fiancé, would you?” Minho coos, batting his eyes.

“I wouldn’t,” Han admits. “But I would do it to you.”

“Hey!” Minho whirls around.

“I meant it when I said ‘Don’t move’!” Han yelps, snatching the scissors away from Minho’s face. “Besides. You’re the one who landed here.”

“You’re the one who decided to make me your fiancé! It would’ve been easier to introduce me as … I don’t know. Your cousin, or something.”

Han sighs, prodding fingers finally coaxing Minho still again. “I know. It was just the first thing that came to mind.”

And what _exactly_ the fuck is Minho supposed to make of that?

Han goes back to cutting away Minho’s beautiful hair, and Minho goes back to humming. _Our dawn is hotter than day._ Han doesn’t complain a second time.

“Done!” Han announces.

Minho feels Han softly brush off the hair on the neck of Minho’s sweater and the nape of Minho’s neck. He holds back another shiver at the contact.

“You can go look if you want,” Han says, like he can’t for the life of him imagine why Minho would want such a thing.

Minho _does_ want, so he skips over to the mirror.

Well … he will miss his long hair. And so will Comets. But this is all a part of North Korean chic, and Lee Minho is nothing if not devoted to the aesthetic.

He makes a kissy face at himself in the mirror, ruffling his hair so it swoops Just So™ over his forehead.

Making North Korean chic his bitch … just another day in the life of Lee Minho.

 _I can’t believe Seventeen wrote_ Pretty U _about me._

He hears Han snort from across the room. Maybe something amusing is happening in the bathtub, and Minho is about to ask him if that’s the case when a knock echoes through the house.

Minho tenses up like it’s an instinct, and honestly it might as well be one; the sound of someone knocking on the gate of this house isn’t exactly associated with the happiest moments of Minho’s life.

Damn Pavlova.

But Han eases his worry. “It’s just the boys.”

And so it is just the boys.

Minho swings the gate open. Curly Fry nods hello, Yongbok waves with both hands, Changbin rolls his eyes, and Jeongin bounces on the balls of his feet with a smile bright enough to rival the camera flashes of Minho’s fansites.

“Okay, so with the first line, you’re gonna bend forward. And as you bend forward, you’re gonna wave your arms like this,” Minho gestures. “And you’re gonna keep doing that as you come back up.”

Yongbok watches, looking more focused than Minho’s ever seen him.

“And then switch both your arms to this side,” Minho says, switching both his arms to that side, “and wave them again. And at the same time, just, like … jump from foot to foot like this.” Minho demonstrates. “Got that?”

“I … think so.”

“Okay, awesome! We can—”

“Hey, top idol!” Changbin yells across the courtyard at them from where he's peeling potatoes. “Wanna make yourself useful?”

“Not particularly!” Minho yells back, before turning back to Yongbok. “And so we do that, and then what you wanna do is put your hands on your hips and just shrug your shoulders. Twice.”

“ _Twice_ , you say?” Yongbok grins, and Minho snorts.

“Exactly!” And then he extends his arm into a new position, Yongbok mirroring him. “And then we take this hand and just flip it back and forth, then back and forth. Stand on this leg,” he adds, and Yongbok does. “Cross your other one at the ankle.”

“Like this?”

Minho grins. “Perfect! Then, just put this hand right here, like this,” he places his hand on his shoulder, “and the other one over your head so your fingers touch.”

Yongbok squints, trying to mimic Minho's position and stopping halfway. “... huh?”

Minho giggles, and steps closer. “Can I touch you?”

At Yongbok’s nod, Minho reaches for his wrists and tugs them into the correct position, pulling his elbow so it hovers more over his head. “It’ll be easier like this.”

Yongbok beams. “That does feel easier.”

“Right!” Minho laughs. “And then from there, you’re just gonna take your hands—keep them how they’re positioned—and swing ‘em right to the top of your head.”

Yongbok follows, and Minho claps delightedly.

“Beautiful! Now, all you’re gonna do is take those hands and flip them outwards. Then just bop them up and down; this is where we say ‘You’re my heart shaker, shaker’!”

“Am I doing it right?”

Glitter cannot be safe to put in your eyes, but Yongbok definitely has some. He has to. How else could his eyes be sparkling so much?

“Yeah! And you can have a little fun with it, too, y’know? Wiggle your hips, bop your head.” Minho wiggles his hips and bops his head, singing, “‘You’re my heart shaker, shaker.’”

“‘You’re my heart shaker, shaker,’” Yongbok sings back at him, and if Minho wasn’t so used to the blinding spotlights of every comeback stage, Yongbok would have left a smile-shaped spot in his vision for days.

Yongbok, being the legendary Once that he is, masters _Heart Shaker_ before the potatoes are even cooked. Minho high fives him, and Yongbok is so enthusiastic Minho’s hand stings with the force of it for two minutes after.

“Here,” Han calls. “Channie, come help me bring these in?”

Minho starts at that—who is Channie?

But Curly Fry stands up, and _oh_. Minho forgot Curly Fry isn’t his real name.

That means … Minho needs to change something.

Yongbok leans over as Minho slips his clipboard from under the table, quickly grabbing a pen to scribble on one of his papers.

“What are you doing?” he whispers.

“You’ll see,” Minho replies, adding a wink just to add to the mysteriousness.

And Yongbok does see, once Minho’s finished eating and the others are halfway there. Minho clambers to his feet. He raises his cup and taps a chopstick against its side.

“Your attention, please!” he calls, even though everyone’s attention is already on him. He tends to have that effect on people.

“As you may know,” he begins, like he’s making an acceptance speech. “Today is my last day with you all.”

Changbin whoops, and starts clapping.

“I know the loss will weigh on your minds for a long time after my departure.” Minho pauses, placing a solemn hand on his chest. “But allow yourselves to cherish the memory of me through … these awards!” He whips out his clipboard.

Jeongin starts clapping this time, followed by Yongbok. Channie smiles, and Changbin frowns, and Han raises an eyebrow.

_Jeongin and Yongbok really are the only men with rights, huh. ‘Not all men’; you’re right. Jeongin and Yongbok would never._

“When did you decide on this?” Han asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Well,” Minho offers a truly magnificent sigh. “I was going to use this paper to write my will, but I decided this would be a more impactful use of these resources. You all should be grateful,” he insists, pointing at them with the clipboard. “My bandmates might end up with nothing if I die. Because of this.”

“And why would we want your awards,” Changbin asks, although it doesn’t sound much like a question.

“You’ve said it yourself, Seo Changbin! I’m a top idol.” Minho gestures around the room, then proudly gestures at himself. “My opinion is very influential. One time I appeared in public wearing these Wing Bling earrings, and the next day they were sold out.

“But I’m getting off topic,” Minho smiles, running a hand through his hair. “So my first award of the night will go to … drumroll please …” He waits for a drumroll. Of course it’s Jeongin and Yongbok that come through first.

“Jeongin!”

Jeongin sits upright in his seat, like he hadn’t expected it. Yongbok cheers for him, though, and Channie claps him in the shoulder.

“For Jeongin, I present the Hospitality Slash Bestest Boy Award.” Minho shows his clipboard, which has Jeongin’s name written under the words _Hospitality/Bestest Boy Award_ , surrounded by little smiley faces. “Because you have been welcoming and kind to me at every turn.” Minho carefully hands the paper to Jeongin, who takes it like it’s a treasure. “Your mother will be proud of you!” He blows a kiss, and Jeongin smiles, eyes bright, and Yongbok excitedly leans over to see the certificate too.

“As your reward, I will offer you a choice: either receive,” Minho takes a breath, for effect, “four ears of corn, to be received now. Or a limited-edition Moomin plushie, to be received after reunification.”

Jeongin thinks about it for a second, furrowing his eyes and pouting. It makes his dimples show up. It is illegally cute.

“I pick … the corn!” he says, and Minho nods.

“A sensible choice. You can get it from the pantry in the kitchen.”

“Hey,” Changbin interjects, looking comically annoyed despite the fact that it doesn’t concern him. “That’s not yours to give away.”

Minho glances at Han, who looks back at him, more amused than anything, and then back down at his clipboard, successfully ignoring Changbin.

“Alright! Second award!” he pretends to read the paper, even though he knows what’s on it. “This award will go to …” he pauses again, and he doesn't need to prompt the drumroll this time.

“Yongbok!” he announces, and Han’s house is filled with cheers. “For Yongbok, I present the Most Dedicated Once Award, because he has shown great perseverance in following his passion for Twice’s music, as well as mastered all the choreography I have taught him.”

Yongbok’s got the sparkliest smile in the world, and he giggles— _giggles_ —as Minho turns his clipboard around to reveal the paper, which along with the award name has very detailed and sophisticated stick figures of the nine members of Twice drawn all over it.

“Your reward! You can choose either this lovely television right here,” Minho says, walking over and displaying it like he’s a showgirl on _Wheel of Fortune_.

Han does speak up this time. “Hey, what the—”

He cuts off when Minho turns to him, mouthing _Trust me_.

“Or you can have a lunch date with Hirai Momo after reunification.”

The words have hardly left Minho’s mouth when Yongbok says, “Lunch date with Momo.”

Minho’s eyes find Han again to send him a wink as he leans forward to give Yongbok the certificate. There’s no way Yongbok would give up the chance to see Momo, even if he has to wait until North and South Korea become one country again.

“And,” Minho continues, tapping his clipboard once again, “our next award. I present this certificate to …” a drumroll “… Channie!”

More applause, and Channie grins, eyes crinkling and cheeks dimpling.

“Also known as Curly Fry, because you are a whole snack. I present this certificate of Cutest Boy in honor of you being the cutest boy.”

A flush makes its way onto Channie’s cute cheeks, and he covers his smile with his hand as Minho turns the award around to reveal the certificate, which is decorated with countless little hearts.

“For your reward, you may choose between the following: a goodbye hug from me right now, or a pair of those Wing Bling earrings after reunification. They would really complement your bone structure.”

“I choose the goodbye hug!” Channie beams, and Minho beams right back, throwing his arms wide open.

“Then c’mere, you handsome bastard.”

Channie stands up, and he squeezes Minho tight, like he’ll never see Minho again.

Which he won’t. Kinda the whole point of a goodbye hug.

“I know this is already my reward,” Channie whispers, “but the best reward of all would be you getting home safe. So try, okay?”

He hugs Minho that much closer, and he’s a tiny bit taller than Minho and it feels so much like Seungmin that Minho’s sexy and unemotional eyes threaten to betray him and tear up.

Perhaps Channie can have some rights. As a treat.

“Alright, alright,” he laughs, slowly drawing back. “I’ll try.”

Soon, he’ll hug the real Seungmin, and then the real Hyunjin, and maybe his eyes will tear up but he’ll be safe. He’ll be home.

_Home, home, home, home._

He tugs Channie’s certificate off the clipboard and hands it to him. “For you,” he says, and Channie takes it with an exaggeratedly formal curtsy. Minho turns back to the room at large, clasping the clipboard to his chest. “And this concludes our awards ceremony. Thank you very much for your attendance, and I hope you enjoy your night!”

He takes a bow, because professionality is his number one concern.

“Hey, top idol,” Changbin says. “Keeping _your_ wits sharp is the hardest job there is, and yet here I am doing it.”

Han snorts, and Yongbok leans forward on the table like he’s about to witness a fight.

“You know what? You’re absolutely right.” Minho looks for another piece of paper, comes up short, and grabs a napkin off the table. “My wits are unbelievably sharp, and by keeping them in peak condition you are indeed doing God’s work.” He looks up and flashes a winning smile. “I dedicate this award to Seo Changbin,” he says, slowly, as he writes on his makeshift certificate, “who sacrificed his own dignity for the sake of his favorite idol. The Sharp Wit Award." Minho places the napkin on the table and slides it in Changbin's direction. "Here you go."

Changbin scoffs. Minho grins.

“As your reward, I can offer you one of two options. The first is a top idol-approved set of shampoo and conditioner. Guaranteed to give you the shiny, healthy hair you’ve been yearning for your whole life.” Minho takes the opportunity to flip his hair back, showcasing the shiny, healthy hair Changbin has been yearning for his whole life.

“Yeah, yeah. And the other option?”

“The other option is a VIP pass to attend one of my group’s concerts after reunification.”

“I will take the first option.”

Minho rolls his eyes, but he can’t keep the smile off his face. Somehow, he knew that was going to be Changbin’s answer. So he shuffles over to the bag of things Han brought him and hands Changbin his rewards.

“So these … are for your hair?” he asks Han.

Han nods. “Yeah. I hadn’t heard of them either, but apparently they’re essential.” He looks at Minho, then back at Changbin and shrugs.

“They absolutely are essential,” Minho assures them.

“They sound cool!” Yongbok chirps.

“If that’s all the awards …” Han starts, then trails off, looking up at Minho expectantly. At Minho’s nod, he stands up, facing away from Minho. “We should get going soon, then.”

Everyone has long since finished eating, and Changbin helps Han take all the dishes out, and after what is somehow both not enough and too much time, Han’s boys are filing out of the gate, waving goodbye to Minho. He waves back.

“Is everything ready?” Minho asks, leaning against the counter and watching Han do the dishes.

“Mhmm.”

“Will we be there in time?”

“Mhm.”

Well. This is a riveting conversation.

Minho watches Han scrub at a stubborn spot in a bowl. He’s never seen someone so focused while washing dishes, but maybe Hyunjin is not the best baseline for comparison.

(He likes to play Red Velvet and dance along, only actually getting anything done in the three seconds between songs. Maybe Hyunjin is the worst baseline for comparison.)

Minho reaches forward and taps at the countertop next to Han. “Hey.”

“Mm?”

Is that the only sound Han makes, now?

“Can I show you something?”

At this, Han finally looks up. And he finally says something that’s not ‘mm,’ thank God: “Show me what?”

Minho grins. “You’ll see when I show you; c’mon.” He holds his hand out. “May I?”

Han frowns, confused, for the split second before he realizes what Minho’s asking, and nods, letting Minho take his wrist and lead him back to the table.

Minho picks up the clipboard right where he left it: lying on the ground next to this cushion, with one last piece of paper still hanging on.

He carefully slips it out, then straightens back up to face Han. And hands him the paper.

Minho watches as Han’s eyes scan the page, watches as something dissolves in his eyes, as his shoulders soften, just a little bit. He watches Han’s mouth turn up in the tiniest of smiles as he reads what Minho wrote.

_I present this award of Best Noodles to Han, for making me noodles that smelled so good I considered eating them even though there was a high chance of them being poisoned._

There’s a small drawing near the bottom, Minho knows, of a detailed and sophisticated stick figure, facing a difficult decision in front of a bowl of noodles.

“And what is my reward for this honor?” Han asks, a playful bounce in his voice as he raises his head back up.

“As your reward, I will treat you to one bubble tea at Angel’s. After reunification.”

“Ah,” Han sighs dramatically. “No choice for me, then?”

Minho shakes his head. “Nope. You have to come find me.”

“Find you, huh?” Han muses. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“You should frame this,” Minho advises, tapping the paper. “So you can keep it safe forever, like the prized possession I know it is.”

“Oh, I will definitely get on that,” Han says, not really sounding like he _will_ definitely get on that.

But who is Minho to judge?

“I am glad to hear it.”

And so he smiles at Han, and Han smiles back for a moment before clearing his throat.

“Boats don’t like to wait here, so we really should be going soon.”

Minho shrugs. “I’m ready whenever.”

Packing is surprisingly easy when you have no belongings to pack; who would’ve thought?

The car Han arrived in yesterday on his mission to save Minho’s life is still parked outside. Han unlocks it, and Minho slides into the passenger seat, and it hits him then: he’s going home.

Finally, finally, finally, he’s going home.

This has been the worst vacation ever. He’s going to demand a raise from JYP. And extend their break.

And he certainly will not be telling JYP to have them paraglide for their next tour.

If Han hears the sigh Minho lets out in response to the gentle hum of the car starting around him, he doesn’t let on, only clasps his seatbelt and tells Minho to do the same.

Minho can’t wait to get home. He’s going to get a large mango milk tea and binge-watch all the dramas he’s been waiting to start and let Soonie—the real Soonie, because he did not go through all this shit just to have no Soonie—walk all over his stomach.

He might even be able to guilt-trip Seungmin and Hyunjin into buying him chicken. Or steak. Or noodles.

Minho chances a glance over at Han, whose face is set, focused on the road ahead.

Maybe not noodles. He has higher noodle standards now.

Speaking of which.

“Thank you,” Minho breathes, cautious to disturb the lulling silence. “For making me noodles. And for not killing me.”

Han snorts, tapping on the steering wheel. “You sure have some high standards.”

“All part of the idol life.”

Minho brushes his hair off his forehead and leans back in his seat, watching North Korea disappear past him.

He allows himself to truly think about what might be going on back home, in the way he hadn’t before he knew he could get home.

Seungmin and Hyunjin might think he’s dead.

Scratch that. They probably do think he’s dead, because it’s been, what, three days? Three days of absolutely no contact. Three days of Minho running for his life.

Minho teases them a lot, but they are the only people he truly loves in the world, and he aches to go back, to make sure they’re not hurting, not because of him.

And he wants to see the look on their faces when he makes his long-awaited re-entrance.

“You’re humming again.”

“That, too, is all part of the idol life,” Minho says, and he tries to remember what song it was, but it’s slipped away completely. “Do you have a favorite song?” he asks instead.

Han pokes his tongue into his cheek. “Hm … I don’t really listen to a lot of music.”

Minho fights back a retort of _Yes, I know; I saw your empty ass bookshelf_ and waits.

“I really liked this one song I heard a while ago. I don’t know what it was called, though.”

Minho grins, even though Han can’t see him. “You could always sing it for me.”

“I certainly could.”

But he doesn’t. Tragically.

Minho clucks his tongue. “Ah. You look like you’d have a nice voice.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you look like you’d have a nice voice.”

“Thank you for explaining in such an in-depth and understandable way.”

Minho rolls his eyes and looks out the window so Han can’t see him smile. It’s getting dark. “I don’t really know how to explain it. I can just imagine you singing well.”

“And how can you know that?”

“Idol’s instincts.”

Han laughs at that, and it’s too loud for the quiet car but Minho doesn’t mind.

“Do you have a favorite song?” Han asks in return, and Minho giggles.

“Oh, do I! It’s called _When I Grow Up_.”

“I don’t know it.”

 _Yeah, you fuckin’ don’t, because your empty ass bookshelf is suffering from a severe lack of_ Boys Be _._

“That’s a terrible shame, seeing as it is the greatest song known to humankind.”

“Well. You could always sing it for me.”

“I could.”

There’s a pause, and Han’s words are half a laugh. “I have an excuse for not singing! You’re an idol! It’s literally your job to sing!”

“I suppose it is,” Minho admits.

“Unless, of course,” Han continues, and his voice sounds a little mischievous, “you were lying the whole time and you’re really a spy.”

Oh, fuck him.

“I am _not_ a spy,” Minho protests. “I know I have sexy and mysterious energy, but I was born to be the next big thing in K-pop.”

“Hm. Sure you were.”

“Fine,” Minho snaps. “Since you’re yearning for it so deeply.” There’s no heat to it, and he’s already smiling just from the thought of singing his favorite song.

But as he opens his mouth, Han turns right onto the pier, and there it is. The boaty-boat.

The sight of it shakes Minho out of the car headspace, and back into the reality of what he’s doing.

He’s smuggling himself out of North Korea on a boat.

That’s a check off the bucket list, at least.

“Is it just one of you?” asks the boaty-boat man. He looks a bit like a monkey. Moves like one, too. He clutches the money Han handed him.

Han turns to Minho, as if asking if Minho wants him to come.

And … well. Minho will not _ask_ Han to come on this boaty-boat ride with him because Lee Minho is a sexy, independent man who doesn’t need a source of familiarity and comfort to survive the boat ride home.

He might want it. Might.

He might want it so much he can’t quite breathe. But he doesn’t need it, and he certainly won’t ask for it.

“Two of us.”

Han hands over more money, and the monkey man goes up onto the stairs that lead onto the deck, and Minho follows, and he pauses before he steps on, looking at the narrow sliver of water he can see between the edge of the pier and the edge of the boat.

He’s doing this. He’s doing this.

The water laps up against those poles holding up the pier. What are they called?

That’s not important right now, so he makes a mental note to ask Seungmin once he’s back home.

And he will be back home.

Minho steps onto the boat.

Han follows, and not a minute later they’re sailing away from the pier.

Away from the pier, and into the unknown.

Maybe Buzzfeed wasn’t so wrong when Minho got Elsa on that What Disney Princess Are You, Based On Your Interior Design Preferences? quiz.

There’s a glowing sheen on the water, and a thrilling breeze flowing past.

This is prime music video material, honestly, and Minho’s first instinct is to take a picture.

Sadly, his phone is sitting safely in the pocket of Hyunjin’s coat a million miles away, because “It’s just paragliding, Jinnie; I won’t need it.”

Oh, the ironies of life.

Minho wonders what he missed online. Maybe that ASMR baking channel posted a new video. Maybe that one TikTokker animated another iconic M3S moment. Maybe Jun posted a selfie.

If Minho missed a fucking Jun selfie, he’ll kill the North Korean dictator himself.

“Are you happy to be going back home?” Han asks, quietly, interrupting Minho’s assassination plans.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. I’ll put the whole country at ease with my return.”

“I’m sure you will,” Han says, and it only half sounds like a joke.

Minho looks up at that, up at Han. He’s softer, like this. In the moonlight. It bounces off his cheeks like Minho’s favorite Fenty highlighter.

“I’m only saying this ‘cause I’ll never see you again,” Minho begins, tapping his fingers against the rail of the boat. “Don’t become a hairdresser. I swear I almost lost an ear in there.”

Han crinkles up his nose like he’s trying not to laugh, even though Minho is one hundred percent serious.

“I’m only saying this ‘cause I’ll never see you again, but you really need to work on your priorities if you’d be willing to die for a good bowl of noodles.”

Minho doesn’t even know where to start with that—who on Earth isn’t willing to die for a good bowl of noodles? Besides, they’re not “good.” They’re heavenly. Well worth dying for.

He doesn’t know where to start so instead he says “I’m only saying this ‘cause I’ll never see you again, but my group is called M3S. And my name is Lee Minho.”

Han chews on his lip, eyes shining. “My name is Han Jisung.”

Somewhere far, far away, a clock is striking midnight. A cat named Soonie is curled up in a shelter bed, waiting for a particularly sexy idol to come and adopt her. And Han Jisung is smiling at Minho.

And then there’s a loud ass ship horn and some bright ass lights and Minho briefly wonders if he’s having a stroke. Or a hallucination. Or a vision.

 _I see … the vision_ , supplies Minho’s characteristically unhelpful brain.

There’s a loud ass voice coming from the same place the horn and lights seem to have come from, and Minho squints in its direction, trying to make out the words.

It’s not a success, but Han—no, _Jisung_ takes Minho by the elbow and the monkey man comes out onto the deck and he says something and Han— _Jisung_ says something too, and it’s all so much so fast.

Status update: Minho doesn’t know what’s going on.

The monkey man lifts up some panel of wood on the deck—apparently it’s a trapdoor or some shit, what the _fuck_ —and Jisung helps Minho jump down before following.

The trapdoor closes.

It’s a jarring stillness compared to the split-second chaos.

“What’s going on?” Minho dares to whisper. He can barely see Jisung, but he can hear Jisung breathing in front of him.

“Apparently they issued a sea order. Basically means no boats are allowed out till it’s lifted. Kinda like a ban on the water.”

In Minho’s sexy opinion, this is an unfortunate turn of events.

“A ban?” he asks feverishly. “What kind of sick joke—didn’t the monkey man know about this?”

“Who?”

They’re both thrown into silence at the sound of footsteps above them.

Minho can see Jisung better now, can see the panic in his eyes.

“What if they open the door,” Minho mutters, feeling that same panic rising up inside him.

God. Where is Soonie when you need her.

This is just like when he hid in that kimchi cellar.

“What happens if they open the door?” Minho mutters, again, a bit more frantically. “They definitely will. They’re so nosy here, asking for your identification and barging into your house for ‘random house inspections,’” Minho does air quotes. “Y’all can’t mind your own damn business up here, so we really need something to cover up the fact that I am a particularly sexy South—”

Minho cuts himself off.

Jisung looks up at him, a little confused and a lot worried.

“What?”

And in a stroke of absolute brilliance—

“Kiss me,” Minho whisper-shouts.

“What?” Jisung whisper-shouts back, like he’s never even heard the word ‘kiss’ before. Maybe he hasn’t. Minho doesn’t know what the fuck goes on up here.

"We’re engaged, bitch!” Minho takes Jisung’s shoulders and lays down on his back, bringing Jisung with him. “This is what engaged people do. They won’t question it. Say we’re on some romantic midnight outing. Unless you have a better idea?”

Jisung stares down at him, hair falling in his face.

"I know it's unfair that someone this sexy is smart, too, but it really do just be like that sometimes."

Jisung stares down at him some more, and Minho thinks _Wow, God really_ is _homophobic_ , and then he thinks _I’m really gonna die in this crusty ass boat_ but when the trapdoor opens once again, just like that kimchi cellar, Minho feels that sense of dread. Of resignation. So this is the end of Lee Minho.

And then Jisung kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tinie playlist:](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2EJG-r4L00LmjNZgwdrPf8Rpun5ezUQO)  
> Burning — Maggie Rogers  
> Come to me — SEVENTEEN  
> L.A.F — Broods  
> Our dawn is hotter than day — SEVENTEEN  
> Angel By The Wings — Sia
> 
> istg the word noodles doesnt look like a word anymore .. take a shot every time minho says the word noodles and promptly die of alcohol poisoning
> 
> also take a shot every time i blatantly project onto minho .. when i grow up best song
> 
> this boy is where i’ll start to make bigger changes from the plot of the show hehe
> 
> lmk what ur favorite part of the story is so far <3 my personal favorite is when lino just decides he will . stop thinking
> 
> i feel like minhos Kiss me I'm ❤ Confused mug could benefit from a visual accompaniment so [here](https://64.media.tumblr.com/b3308cb6fba9157945c5d51990c23ff2/379a09a09a72a402-d0/s1280x1920/631e89af7e1af8ed295cb4ed01c03bb89342f4b0.jpg) ya go its from [this](https://cykas.tumblr.com/post/619494710445293568/while-we-here-my-favorite-mugs) tumblr post that i think about literally all the time
> 
> leave kudos n comments if u enjoyed !! or visit your local dummy at [tumblr dot com](https://taeyeonsb.tumblr.com/)
> 
> see yall next time !!

**Author's Note:**

> [baby playlist:](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2EJG-r4L00LmjNZgwdrPf8Rpun5ezUQO)  
> Stay — TAEYEON  
> Rollercoaster — Bleachers  
> Wish — Day6  
> Stress — TAEYEON  
> EMERGENCY — Day6  
> SIGNAL — TAEYEON  
> Second Life — SEVENTEEN
> 
> yes i wrote this in five hours collectively .. no i dont know how that happened
> 
> thamk u for reading my loves <3 leave kudos and/or comments if u liked it !! i treasure it all and constantly crave validation ;P
> 
> hit me up on my [tumblr](https://taeyeonsb.tumblr.com/) if u wanna scream about minsung
> 
> or check out my other fics ;)
> 
> stay safe and beautiful my lovelies !
> 
> note: i don't have this finished yet ! so the updates are not guaranteed 2 b regular (regular huh) pls bear with me my darlings


End file.
